I took this post down to tinker with it, which means that two comments appear to have vanished. Apologies. I didn't know that would happen. Feel free to comment again, or whatever.
There’s an arrogance that comes with age, that says “to attain my level of wisdom, you need to have walked in my shoes for as long as I have”. I’ve been guilty of it here. It’s the assumption that more experience is better experience; that only a long journey will arrive at a destination. It ignores the fact that journeys short and long are made up of a thousand interim arrivals, and that every road is no more than a long line of destinations.
When this song came up on shuffle play, the first feeling was amusement, because we go back more than 30 years to a time that seemed to me then to be a culmination, and which was in one way at least. Listening to the song all the way through, the old feelings resurfaced from that time, and reminded me that though life does go on in some ways, in others it stops dead-still: when she left and took the baby with her, it was the end of something, and in all the time since, I have not learned any lesson that could add to what I learned then. Age has given me no useful perspective on that time. Experience has taught me nothing about dealing with those feelings. Wisdom is powerless in the face of raw hurt that is only ever buried, but never soothed.
When I was a young man, I was foolish, oafish, careless, thoughtless, hot-headed, wrong-headed, self-centred, oblivious. I still am those things, perhaps to a lesser extent, or in less damaging ways. But I have no grounds for looking down on that younger man. The passage of 30-odd years hasn’t made me any better at “trying to understand how our lives had led us there”.
Here are the lyrics to the song, and then a video of a live performance by Jackson Browne, who looks much older than he did back then (he too was only a boy, what did he know?) but sounds exactly the same.
Late for the Sky
The words had all been spoken
And somehow the feeling still wasn’t right
And still we continued on through the night
Tracing our steps from the beginning
Until they vanished into the air
Trying to understand how our lives has led us there
Looking hard into your eyes
There was nobody I’d ever known
Such an empty surprise to feel so alone
Now for me some words come easy
But I know that they don’t mean that much
Compared with the things that are said when lovers touch
You never knew what I loved in you
I don’t know what you loved in me
Maybe the picture of somebody you were hoping I might be
Awake again I can’t pretend and I know I’m alone
And close to the end of the feeling we’ve known
How long have I been sleeping
How long have I been drifting alone through the night
How long have I been dreaming I could make it right
If I closed my eyes and tried with all my might
To be the one you need
Awake again I can’t pretend and I know I’m alone
And close to the end of the feeling we’ve known
How long have I been sleeping
How long have I been drifting alone through the night
How long have I been running for that morning flight
Through the whispered promises and the changing light
Of the bed where we both lie
Late for the sky
