the song is never the same.

there are so many reasons this song is so close to my heart; on a purely aesthetic level, i think it's safe to say that it's one of the strangest, most beautiful, most complicated things i've ever written; it's certainly the most vocally acrobatic. it's the song i wrote in response to one of the most devastating experiences i can remember having...which is strange, because looking back it's hard to believe that such a situation would have turned me inside out in the way it did--nothing about it makes for a balanced equation when measured against what i went through. tsk. live and learn, i suppose.

i wonder if i'll ever write anything of its measure again; possibly not, but that's okay--to have written one thing i love so much is worth anything i had to get through to get there, and worth never being able to do it again. to have written one thing like it is all i really need.

we haven't played it out in a while, because it's nearly 7 minutes long and, to be perfectly frank, it's a bit of a downer. and i don't think we'll be playing it out at our next show (march 16 at the knitting factory), for the aforementioned reason, and because it misses the slide guitar almost as much as i miss the slide guitar player.

despite the fact that i know that refraining from playing it live is a good thing--frequently, it's akin to dropping a brick wall into the middle of the set, which is sometimes hard to recover from (plus, as i've mentioned before, it's extremely difficult to sing)--i miss playing it. because i love it. because in many ways, it's my seven closest minutes to perfection. because if i never write anything else again in my life (which is a semi-constant worry for me), i will always have this one song which turned a truly awful, stupid time into something i could look on without vitriol or anguish. because it helped me through that time. because it's something beautiful. because it chose me. because it's one of the best things i've ever done. because if i can make something like that, maybe i'm not all that bad.

on the other hand, it's something i'll never really be able to surpass, or even live up to. but let's not go down that road, shall we?

i muse too much when it's late and i'm tired.

i can't warm myself up with the wool you pulled over my eyes
or understand why you stayed long past making up your mind
your outline started cooling as you slept there by my side
so i've brought out the whiskey, it's what will keep me warm tonight.

i was going to say that it's funny how a song about someone that broke my heart makes me miss dom all the more; but really, it's not funny at all.

actually, it makes perfect sense.