pitterpatter.

a couple days ago, i wrote a song that's 46 words but it seems to manage to sum up everything i've ever wanted to say or create. it's a song about leaving. it can be about leaving somewhere or leaving someone, and how you don't want to leave but there you are, turning down a road with the thought that you might never see this place or this person ever again. i based it off my horrible experience in lake george, new york when i went to this average theme park that turned out to be more for kids than anyone else. and since the park wasn't doing much for me, i turned my attention to the people there. and i took mental notes. little 10 year old girls with broken bones from cheerleading or gymnastics or whatever who think they're the shit because they always have one finger on the send button on their phones, always texting people, because they're more interested in a screen than what's going on around them. families who look like they never leave the mall, soccer moms who look like they never leave their SUVs, an all-girls jewish camp hustling into the park in their black dresses that went down to their ankles for modesty. i saw everything and nothing there. and it translated into the first part of this song. this trip to the theme park was the last leg of a roadtrip that i had taken with my dad for 3 days, to look at colleges and just get away from everything. i saw the broken-down shanty towns of vermont, and the stark contrast that was woodstock, vermont in comparison to its counterparts. i saw mountain ranges that stood thousands of feet above me, all green and brown in the churning august heat that it was not accustomed to. this part of the world was waiting for the first snow, where it would no longer be green and brown. and all was quiet. new hampshire was loud when i left it, but once i hit vermont everything got quiet. anyways... once i left lake george, i took essentially two roads. and i realized that, once i turned onto the second road, there'd be no turning back. i didn't want to leave, i didn't want to go back. i wanted to stay in this place forever, despite my horrible experience at the theme park. the town itself is beautiful, dotted with exotic restaurants and street performers, one which looked up at mewith the most awful stare while i gazed at his guitar playing. my dad and i stopped in a mediterranean restaurant, where i had my first spicy chicken gyro and i almost cried from the spice while i was talking to my mom and updating her on our trip to the colleges, (she couldn't come with us because she had to work) telling her about how I loved the tiny town of Burlington which was the most beautiful little illuminated town I had ever laid my eyes on and how the campus of UVM turned me onto the idea of going there so much, despite the fact that I knew absolutely nothing about what they had to offer there. and then we stopped in a polish restaurant, where i had kielbasa on a skewer with pickles, tomato, etc. and i loved how you could taste almost every flavor imaginable in such a small plate: salt, sweet, sour, bitter. and then dad and i took a long long walk around town, checking out the ships that were about to set sail, looking into the several arcades, feeling like you were a part of this wonderful machine that made sense. it was beautiful, lake george. so it felt impossible to leave. but once we finally did get to leaving, my attention turned towards the fact that i was taking a single route allllll the way back from new york, into vermont, and into new hampshire, one town over from where i lived. Route 4 East. And I was amazed at how there was nothing on that road, and how one town bled into the next, and how i felt like i was going in a straight line, and how there were no cars in front or behind me for miles and miles and miles. I loved when i'd let the gas pedal go and just glide down 7.5% grade hills until i got it up to 75 in a 50 and my dad would say "Slow down, Mario." (in reference to Mario Andretti). But when I finally got into familiar territory, it was surreal, knowing that i've been down this road before, but it's the same road that i've been following for hundreds of miles. and then i got home and unpacked and wrote the 46 word song in summary of everything that I just described. Now it's recorded, and I just need to mix and mashter it.

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