Lost in the SoundClouds
It’s great to hear your voice first thing in the morning. It fills me with pure joy. The new music is catchy. I love your growth as a songwriter. It was always a privilege to witness your process. Up until the point you’d shoo me away for privacy purposes, that is. Eventually, I could sense the time coming and excuse myself to save you the effort.
But, it’s the old songs that cause me to lose my way. It brings back visions of this goofy girl living in a tent in my front yard, stealing my attention when she thought no one was watching. The power of your voice carried for blocks. Or so it seemed. Now, it carries for miles. Twenty-one hundred, to be exact.
Your voice carries me to simpler times. Random open mics around Portland, meeting new people, going on crazy adventures. Despite moving with two close friends, it was you who made Oregon feel like home. We were both in search of something. We found bits of it in each other.
The titles of your tracks, despite being written predominantly before we’d met, describe our relationship so well. Lyrics written with others in mind scream my name. It makes me feel like I was just another song waiting to be written. Be that the case, at least part of us will live on.
There are times when I wake up in the middle of the night and reach over to nothingness. I grab the pillow you left, heart-shaped with the graphic of an anatomical heart. How fitting…
I knew California would be a lot for you. I knew you weren’t going to stay. I figured I’d deal with it when the time came. The time just came much sooner than I’d expected. Maybe it was you who was too much for California.
I feel lost without you here. I have no one to talk to until sunrise, dissecting the finer points of life. My choices feel half-hearted without your input. You were always there to lift me when I was down and to ground me when I was floating away. Then again, a lot of our time together was spent driving in circles, so maybe I’ve always been lost.
Still, I see you everywhere. Mostly in my photo album, because I have A THOUSAND pictures of you. “I need some pictures for this new project,” you’d say. “Let’s go here! What about this? How’s the angle? Can you get everything?” You rarely used any of them. My favorites were the one’s I took when you weren’t looking. I captured you in your essence — just how I always saw you. How I still see you.
Our phone calls are much more infrequent now, for various reasons. Caught in the hustle of city life, we’re relegated to random texts, sometimes hours between responses. I still light up when it’s your name that flashes in my inbox though I wish it were for an incoming call. Granted, whenever I want to hear your voice, all I have to do is press play.
