There was this one night where we ached for the city streets.
We all had places to be and parts of our lives that needed to be packed into boxes and labelled with black permanent markers, but we needed company more than cardboard. So we went out.
The street lights stared down at us. Someone brought whiskey and our stupid voices and soft drunk laughs bounced around the alleyways we shuffled through. We passed the bottle around, burning our lips that planted alcohol kisses on the warm cheeks of whoever happened to stand beside us. And we went on in this way; lipstick like loving warpaint smeared across our faces.
And sometimes when we had nothing to say, we made music. Humming. Running sticks along chainlink fences. Rapping the tops of metal garbage cans. Other times we merely fell into an agreed silence, listening to the sloppy footfalls around us.
We crossed paths with other night wanderers and shook their hands because we had all sunk into the same spacious midnight. We were all leaving trails behind us of bruised pavement and glowing breath.
But eventually the horizon began to show milky blue and the stars were slowly being erased by the oncoming day, so we started home.
People stumbled up porch steps, reduced to hands waving from inside doorways, breaking off like I was the shore and they were small, ebbing tides. I buried my face into the rough suede of a last friend's jacket and then released; watched the spark of yellowing room lights as he made his way through his house; then the last sparking in his bedroom window.
And I set off, alone, in the direction of my house -- hands deep in my pockets against the morning cold, the fresh ghost of a bittersweet night lost in the air above my head.
Left clicks, night wanderers.
Talking in Code by Margot & the Nuclear So and So's
Cindy by Ola Podrida
Where Gravity is Dead by Laura Veirs
Black Flowers by Yo La Tengo
Twilight by Elliott Smith
Saw You in the Wild by Great Lake Swimmers
NYC by Interpol
Echo Park by Joseph Arthur
Lay Lady Lay [Bob Dylan cover] by Magnet
Bright End of Nowhere by Matt Good
See You Soon by Coldplay
Have to Explode by Mountain Goats
Gold World by Aloha
The Sound of Silence by Simon & Garfunkel
Boys of Melody by Hidden Cameras **
I Go to the Barn Because I Like The by Band of Horses
Poke by Frightened Rabbit
Moments of Protest by The Remains of Brian Borcherdt
Capsized by Sarah Harmer
Left and Leaving by The Weakerthans
Thanks for stopping by,
Alie
** Check out the amazing take away show of this song which follows the gorgeous procession of the band and a crowd of hand-clapping, candle-holding luckies as they music their way along the Canal Saint Martin in Paris.
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