2001-02-19 - 1:58:24 PM

Spring Street

My favorite song off Dar Williams' latest album is "Spring Street", about a person leaving an unfulfilling relationship. No, I don't want to leave the relationship I'm in. I just find the idea of being able to leave things behind very appealing.

The first verse asks, "Can I just forget the frames I shared with you?" It's a really good question. I've been in a couple of work situations that totally sucked, for example, and I've always been delighted when I was able to quit and go elsewhere. Alas, the evil stays with me. Six years later I still find myself making some decisions with the memory of my experience at the Umich helpdesk firmly in mind.

Relationships, the obvious other entity that I've sometimes tried to leave behind, work the same way. Witness the ever-popular concept of the rebound. Whenever someone gets dumped, the next person they date almost *always* gets the privilege of helping the dump-ee work out the scars. The dumper, on the other hand, usually fails to learn anything from the experience and repeats the same mistake later on. Nothing is ever really left behind.

The song devotes all of one line to this problem, though, and spends most of the rest of its time on pretty imagery about the vagaries of love. I like it for just that reason. It's really pretty to think that we can just walk away from the various nastinesses that we all endure. I just wish it worked that way.

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