title from noder - beatrice ,
whose story- is a single line from
a REM song which is from a CD
released in 1985, which is a lifetime ago, yet I recall it still
All of this for me is wrapped around a single idea. People move and yet we never really leave where we are from. Those of us who are expatriates know a special kind of ambivalence toward the place we left and the place that we do not want to return to.
Mr.Stipe and I share little in common, but we are both males who grew up in the American South in Pre- 9/11 America and have read a great deal of literature. His writing reflects some of those qualities and many of the songs include his own internal tug of war with his connection to the friends and family in Georgia, where he grew up, and his distaste for the politics and culture of a place that can't get over its past. Faulkner just doesn't die.
Traveling shows you the world, but it is a temporary snapshot- a brief film. Moving is a whole different experience and I have often felt that when I leave one area code and move to another I am "starting over" - as if there is some line in the street where I cross into This place and leave That place. I do not know how it is that we slowly change from being of a place to being From a place (past tense) But it happens, I have seen it occur to many people I know and it has happened to me. Gradually or all at once we become residents of one-- and a former resident of somewhere else.
There used to be a movie theater- there. There used to be a girl I know who lived -there. There used to be a cool bar -there. But they are all gone, and I'm gone too, but even though most of what I remember is gone- the place itself remains. The memories, which were only a single version of how the place was, also remain, but even they are altered by what I see when I go back to visit. I don't think it is an experience I would recommend to you, but it is the same as telling a teenage boy not to drive his car fast. It is advice I expect you to ignore.
Who are you going to call for?
What do you have to change?
A familiar face a foreign place
I forget your name