Tag Archives: Ryan Adams

Riffs and variations on loss and friendship featuring Chantenay carrots, bad French, Taylor Swift, and a stuffed rabbit

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“You know that Taylor Swift song ?”

“I may be familiar with Swifty’s work. Which one ?”

“Shake It Off.”

“It’s a fine, fine thing. Didn’t think it’d be your cup of tea though.”

“I’m a broad church. But why’s there that whole bit about baking ?” asked Pete.

“Baking ? What are you talking about ?” replied Jen.

“You know… players gonna play, play, play, and then haters gonna hate, hate, hate…”

“Yeah, then it’s I’m just gonna shake, shake, shake.”

“But after that,” interrupted Pete, “it goes bakers gonna bake, bake, bake. Like she’s doing a shout out to sous chefs or something.”

“Sous chefs don’t do the baking you idiot. They’re like second in command chefs. Literally, they’re under chefs. Well, literally linguistically, I don’t know if they’re literally under them physically. Depends on how cosy the kitchen is I guess.”

“Really ? What’s that sous pastry then ?”

“Choux pastry you tit. What were you doing in French ?”

“J’étais pas attention,” replied Pete in a more than passable accent, enunciating each syllable of att-en-ti-on with relish.

“Non ?”

“Non, j’ai seulement pris parce que je pensais que le professeur était très sexy.”

“You’re a man of hidden talents. And did you really just take French because you liked the teacher ?”

“Oui. It’s why I ended up doing Drama and Economics as well. My qualifications are really weird but I have a lot of happy memories in my formative years of vaguely stern older women trying to teach me things.”

“That’s quite enough insight into your adolescence thanks and it doesn’t get you off the hook with the baking thing. She doesn’t sing bakers gonna bake, bake, bake. It’s heartbreakers gonna break, break, break. The whole point of the song is that people are going to try and play her, hate on her, break her heart, or be a faker but she’s not going to let it get to her. She’s just going to shake it off.”

Pete answered quietly, reciting part of the verse. “Shake it off. I’m dancing on my own, making moves up as I go. That’s what they don’t know…”

Jen sighed. “You too, huh ?”

“Oh god yes, me too. After a while I just couldn’t listen to all that miserable stuff anymore. I couldn’t work out whether my own sadness would fade if I didn’t keep stoking it with songs in minor keys so I went through a phase of just playing pop music. I must have listened to Shake It Off ten times a day for a couple of weeks.”

“You heard the Ryan Adams version ? Covered the whole album for some reason.”

“Yeah, I have but you know what ? It doesn’t make any difference. I hear more sadness in her version than his. I know he broke it all down and plays some sparse, stripped back, slowed down take on it but it’s all borrowed…”

“…that’s kind of how cover versions work…”

“…no, I know but you can borrow the song but make the emotion your own. Listen to Buckley’s Hallelujah. Or, while we’re on Adams, listen to his version of Wonderwall, it’s like he found depths in it that Noel Gallagher didn’t even know he’d started digging. But the pathos in Shake It Off is all there in Swift’s original. All sunny on the outside but all dancing on my own on the inside. It’s the girl who didn’t fit in at school, the person who always felt a bit out of place, someone who retreats to their self when they don’t know how to deal with the world.”

“You seem to have given this some thought… Are you sure it’s not just a song about shaking off your troubles and jigging about a bit ?”

“Ten times a day. Two weeks. I know that song like the proverbial back of my hand. It’s not about jigging about a bit. Not for me at least.”

“So…,” Jen paused. “I’m guessing it didn’t actually help you shake it off ?”

“I’m not sure what would help that. The sad songs aren’t doing it and the bouncy ones aren’t either. It doesn’t seem to matter what it is but I just see her or hear her in everything. Always in the most unexpected places. Did I tell you about Valentine’s Day ?”

“Nope, I don’t think so.”

“It had become a bit of an in-joke between us. You know Georgie, she didn’t really go for the whole hearts and flowers thing but underneath it all she was romantic. Not that she’d much admit it but it was there. She liked it if I surprised her with something. It didn’t have to be anything traditional but just something that showed a bit of thought, I think that was what she liked.”

“Is that what prompted the teddy bear thing you two used to do ?”

“Yeah,” Pete laughed. “Sort of. It started as a joke one Valentine’s Day when I bought her the cheesiest bear I could find. It was holding a pink heart that had ‘I love you’ written on it and it had a matching pink bow on its ear. I mean it was just this awful thing that we just had a big laugh about. She went out the next year and got me this massive stuffed rabbit, all doe eyed…”

“Rabbit eyed, surely ?” said Jen.

“It’s an expression. You’re in a very literal mood today. Doe eyed. They’re stuffed toys, they’re not anatomically correct representations of woodland creatures. Anyway, it was all doe eyed, floppy ears and it was holding…”

“Wait, don’t tell me… Was it holding a love carrot ?”

“Hey, leave my love carrot out of it,” laughed Pete.

“With pleasure. Although… If it’s that orange and knobbly then you really should see a doctor, you know ?” Jen was trying and failing to suppress a fit of giggles. “Would you say your love carrot is from the Nantes variety or more of a stubby Chantenay ?”

“What are the ones you get in the shops ?”

“There’s loads of different ones. From the small but tasty aforementioned Chantenay, more of a snacking carrot that one, right through to the Purple Dragon. Ten inches of purple carroty pleasure.”

“You just made that up,” Pete protested.

“No, seriously. When I was at Uni I used to do some part-time work at a greengrocers and so now, along with my degree in History, I have a pretty decent knowledge of root vegetables.”

“Must come in handy.”

“Well, until now, not so much but I can confirm with some authority that the Purple Dragon is an actual thing. It wasn’t that popular, I think the colour put people off, so I used to get given bags of them to take back for the house. We pretty much lived on carrots, Marlboro lights and Thunderbird that year.”

“Was always Asda sherry in our house. Foul stuff but it had the best alcohol content to pound note ratio. I don’t remember many carrots, or vegetables at all to be honest. There was a lot of tuna pasta and a lot of toast. Especially in the third year after me and Georgie got together. We used to sit up after a night out, just talking and drinking coffee, eating toast…” Pete trailed off and there was silence on the line for a few seconds.

“You were telling me about the Valentine’s thing…” Jen nudged.

“The rabbit. Right. She got me the big stupid floppy eared thing and the next year I got her something sillier and it just carried on. She always said that she didn’t like those staged, formal occasions when you were supposed to declare that you were in love but I don’t know. We thought we were being all ironic and above it all but I know we both used to really look forward to that time of year.”

“It was just a different way of taking part,” said Jen.

“I guess. Now though, after the accident, I wish we hadn’t. Every February is just going to be an emotional assault course. I can avoid the card shops easily enough but there’s Valentines stuff everywhere. Supermarkets, petrol stations…”

“Nothing quite says I love you like a bottle of de-icer.”

“That must be the most passive-aggressive Valentines gift you can get your lover.”

“I don’t know. A Chantenay carrot might run it pretty close.”

“I have a run of decent days, maybe even a week, but it’s just too hard when the world is screaming reminders in your face. If we hadn’t made Valentines a thing then it’d be okay but…” Pete trailed off.

“But it was your thing and you should treasure that. Find some comfort in the things that you did and shared rather than mourning the ones you won’t have.”

“You sound like my counseller.”

“That probably means we’re right, yeah ?” said Jen gently.

“You probably are. You both are. But it’s easy in the text book version of stages of grief and not so easy when you’re dealing with it…”

“I know. I’m sorry Pete. I didn’t mean…”

Pete interrupted softly. “Don’t apologise Jen. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to snap at you. I know you’re looking out for me and you’re right. I do hang on to the happy memories of her but they’re all jumbled up with the feeling that I’ve lost the best part of myself. The past just reminds me that I’ve lost my present and lost my future.”

“It’ll be a different future.”

“I know but I’’m not sure I’m ready to accept that yet.”

The line was silent for five, ten seconds. Eventually Jen asked the same question she’d asked every week or so for the past five months.

“I’m sorry Pete but I’ve gotta go now, early start again tomorrow. Are you alright ?” There was the same pause he always left before answering and then the same answer before the line went dead.

“No. Not today Jen. But ask me again tomorrow.” Pete put down the phone and picked up the large, stuffed rabbit that was lying in front of him, held it up in front of his face. “Do you miss her too ?”

 

This is the third time I’ve felt the need to just let Pete and Jen talk to each other. Format is always the same and the title continues to borrow (steal) from Sufjan Stevens. I just like hearing them try to work things out.

The other two are here: Riffs and variations on loss and friendship featuring balloons, AA Milne, Sufjan Stevens and phone sex

Riffs and variations on loss and friendship featuring onion rings, Nick Cave, tinnitus, and Brexit

 

Heartbreaker

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There was only one album I couldn’t bring myself to break. Ryan Adams: “Heartbreaker”. That’d be about right. It was his favourite and even though, right then, kneeling there amid splintered vinyl and ripped sleeves I hated him, I couldn’t bring myself to do it. Hated him and still loved him. Heartbreaker.

I had stopped crying by the time Mum got in from work, heard the key in the lock and listened to her moving through the hallway into the kitchen. A tap running. The click of the kettle. The soft tear of her opening that day’s post, probably another reminder of how much we owed. How much things cost. I thought about cost as I looked down, again, at the letter in my hands. The one that had slipped silently out from between the rows and rows of records, undisturbed since he’d gone.

Dear Emily… please forgive me…

Fragments were all that stuck. I hope one day you’ll understand. Look after your mum. She loves you. I love you. Keep playing. Keep singing. He’d even made that stupid joke. Our stupid joke. Two kinds of music Emily: country and western. I didn’t think I’d ever be able to forgive that. What was that other thing we used to say ? All those songs are about escape, that was it. This can’t be what he meant ? Can it ? We were supposed to escape from everyone else, not from each other. You and me and Mum. They were about hope.

Look after your mum.

“Emily ?” Mum was calling from the kitchen. The kettle had boiled and she must have made her tea. “You here love ?” I didn’t answer but her voice was enough to loosen the numbness, to bring me back to the room. I rolled onto my side and pulled my knees up to my chest, choking back the huge sobs that were rising up inside me. I didn’t want her to hear. “Emily ?”. More urgent now, footsteps approaching, padding up the stairs.

She loves you. I love you.

The door swung open and bumped against my feet. Someone was calling my name, pushing harder at the door. I felt my body slide slightly on the broken, shining, black records strewn around me and then there was someone next to me, arms around me, whispering my name over and over, pushing my hair back from my face. There was a moment then, just the briefest moment, when I felt like a child again; like someone else would make it alright and knew what to do. Knew. I pushed her away.

“You knew.”

She opened her mouth, covered it with her hands, tears tracing her cheeks and onto her fingers. She was shaking and simply opened her arms towards me, her face contorted with shock. She pleaded.

“I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know.” Her arms were still outstretched. “Please Em. I didn’t know. I didn’t want you to find out this way.” It hurt too much to look at her. She didn’t move, didn’t try to stop me, as I pushed past her out on to the landing and down the stairs. I pulled on my coat and dug my feet into an old pair of trainers, laces still done up, before opening the front door. Escape. That’s what all those songs were about. Escape but not hope.

 

……

This is story 30 in a series of 42 to raise money and awareness for the mental health charity Mind. My fundraising page is here and all donations, however small, are really welcome: http://www.justgiving.com/42shorts

This is a bit more of Emily’s story (from previous two posts, Concrete Cowgirl and Broken). I am still undecided whether Emily gets to tell her story in the first person or whether it falls to me in the third. And I’m still not sure if she has a happy ending…

May you one day carry me home

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29. Oh My Sweet Carolina – Ryan Adams

There was an incongruity to it, the contrast between the man shuffling on stage, unkempt hair, scruffy, and the surroundings. He almost looked lost, a tiny figure sat with his guitar, a piano to one side, accompanied by a cellist, dwarfed by the Royal Festival Hall with its capacity to house an orchestra; a vast open space purpose designed (not entirely successfully) to accommodate sound and music.

With scarcely a word or barely so much as a glance at us, the audience, he began to play, picking out the opening notes to “Oh My Sweet Carolina”. The expectant chatter that had broken into appreciative applause as he’d made his way on to the stage died instantly. There was a collective holding of breath as he began:

Well I went down to Houston and I stopped in San Antone
I passed up the station for the bus
Was trying to find me something but I wasn’t sure just what
Man I ended up with pockets full of dust

The words exhaled softly, quietly into the microphone, fingers methodically working the neck of his guitar. He seemed lost in it, oblivious to us, absorbed in some personal meditation on homesickness and another of those tales of a lost soul looking for a way back that country music does so well. We were lost in it too, the audience given over in a kind of reverie, astonishingly still and silent and rapt.

So I went on to Cleveland and I ended up insane
Bought a borrowed suit and learned to dance
I was spending money like the way it likes to rain
Man I ended up with pockets full of ‘caine

Just voice and guitar was holding us, the entire room transfixed. I’d seen him do this before, first time I saw him play was at the Lyric in Hammersmith, a pokey old theatre with maybe a hundred of us there. He’d been a little difficult that night, almost affectedly pulling open note books, propping them up on his music stand, puffing on endless cigarettes, ignoring the crowd despite the intimacy of the venue for the first half of the set. It was either someone extremely insecure, stumbling through stage fright, or someone desperate to project their cast iron credentials as an artist. Perhaps it was both. The set was largely made up of the songs from “Heartbreaker” which is such a bruisingly honest and raw record that I guess it might not be easy to lay yourself that bare on stage, particularly on such a small stage with nowhere to hide. Whatever it was something magical happened that night when he played “Come Pick Me Up” and he and us in the audience softly seemed to find some catharsis in its bitter lament to betrayal. It was the first- but not last – time that I thought he was absolutely the real deal.

Oh my sweet Carolina
What compels me to go ?
Oh my sweet disposition
May you one day carry me home

I’d seen the other Ryan Adams too, the rock n roll version. In those early stages post Whiskeytown, solo, it was as if he wanted to be Gram Parsons and The Rolling Stones at the same time; a one person embodiment of the Exile sessions both in terms of music and lifestyle. Just before “Gold” broke in the UK I saw him at Shepherd’s Bush Empire backed by a full band – a full band purpose built to replicate that early 70s Stones sound, or even a country leaning E Street Band. It wasn’t quite Dylan going electric but there was definitely a mixed reaction in the crowd – in particular the saxophonist divided opinion, filling in the harmonica parts from both “Heartbreaker” and “Gold” with horn. I loved it but then he was riffing on two reference points – in Springsteen and the Stones – that I adore so it was easy for me to hear it all as a straight extension of his country (or Americana if you insist) roots into R&B and rock and roll. For others it was apparently some kind of betrayal or sell out – the purity lost in chasing some notion of being a star. To me it just looked like he was going where his muse took him and having a ton of fun. By the close he had everyone pretty much back on side, closing with what became his famous cover of Wonderwall, which eventually even the song’s writer, Noel Gallagher, acknowledged was improved in Adams‘ reading of it. Again, I left, convinced of his genuine greatness.

I ain’t never been to Vegas but I gambled all my life
Building news print votes I raced in sewer mains
I was trying to find me something but I wasn’t sure just what
Funny how they say that some things never change

“Gold” and “Heartbreaker” were huge records for me in the early 00s as was, latterly, the two parts of “Love Is Hell” (another painfully beautiful record, so raw it’s practically an open wound). In particular “Gold”‘s lead track “New York New York” will always place me driving home, picking my way into West London from Hertfordshire, skirting Heathrow, on September 11th, 2001, anxiously and acutely aware of the eerily empty skies above me. It was chance, of course, that Adams had recorded an open love letter to the city that had become his adopted home, chance that repeated as the video for the track was recorded four days before 911: the entire film features Adams playing the song with the Manhattan skyline as his backdrop, the Twin Towers dominating every frame. It became a song of defiance and will always be lodged in my memory in association with that day alongside Springsteen’s “My City Of Ruins”.

Oh my sweet Carolina
What compels me to go
Oh my sweet disposition
May you one day carry me home

Back in the Festival Hall I am experiencing something akin to a religious awakening. I don’t think I’ve taken a breath since the song began, haven’t moved a muscle, as if changing anything – the slightest disruption – could shatter this fragile, delicate piece of music. It sounds like a direct expression of the deepest, saddest longing I’ve ever heard and he’s creating it right in front of me.

For me Adams never quite touched those early heights (or possibly depths) again but, in a way, I’m glad. His early work speaks of such overwhelming pain and unhappiness that I suspect the alternative path his life might have taken – alternative to continuing as a respected singer songwriter, settling down, cleaning up – would have been for his life to end. If there was a likely candidate to join “that stupid club” along with Kurt and Jeff and Jimi and Janis and Jim then he was it. I’m glad he didn’t and I still greatly enjoy his music. Perhaps it’s not quite as personal to me now as it was but he still has the capacity to floor me – witness the more recent performance of “Oh My Sweet Carolina” with Laura Marling filling in admirably for Emmylou Harris that you can find here. It is a fabulous thing indeed.

Up here in the city it feels like things are closing in
The sunset’s just my light bulb burning out
I miss Kentucky and I miss my family
All the sweetest winds they blow across the South

Memory is imperfect. Funnily enough one of the themes in writing this particular series of posts is that I believe that specific songs are strong anchors of a certain time and place, strong signifiers of what I was experiencing and feeling at the time. It’s possible to hear a recording of “Oh My Sweet Carolina” from that night in November 2002 at the Royal Festival Hall – you can stream it here if you’re so inclined or you can read closer-to-the-moment reviews of the gig here and here. It’s interesting how many details were wrong in my memory. In my first draft of this post he didn’t acknowledge the audience at all before playing – he actually directly spoke to us. I’d forgotten the cello completely. The song does play out to silence but it’s not quite as instant as the version in my mind (it’s still pretty impressive for a London audience who, often times as not, seem to love their own conversation as much as what is happening on stage).

The spirit of it is right though. The intensity of a moment in which he conjured something breathtakingly, heart achingly beautiful; a tender yearning for the safety of home. All delivered by the unassuming, slightly dishevelled man playing, stripped back and exposed, in that grand and imposing space.

Oh my sweet Carolina
What compels me to go
Oh my sweet disposition
May you one day carry me home
May you one day carry me home

 

 

 

 

 

 

Like an extra arm, you are a part of us…

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16. Goodbye England (Covered In Snow) – Laura Marling                                                2010/11

Since my daughter was born, just over six years ago, there’s pretty consistently been snow each winter in England. Growing up I remember snow as a rare event – I don’t know factually whether it was, it may just be the vagaries of memory – whereas now it seems to arrive every year.

It’s divisive, snow. With adult eyes I view it as a wearying inconvenience: scraping the car, clearing the drive, being cold and wet, dangerous on the roads. Through a child’s eyes, of course, it’s a massive adventure: building a snowman, throwing snowballs, slipping and sliding, and the delicious prospect of the cancellation of school.

“Goodbye England” was the lead single from Marling’s second album “I Speak Because I Can” and was the song that, to me, heralded the arrival of a very special talent. Her first record “Alas I Cannot Swim” is extremely good but what has struck me as miraculous about Marling is her progression from record to record in such scant time. There’s a discernible growth in confidence in her four albums, appearing in relative quick succession over the last five years, with each building musically on the last. It’s the closest thing I think I’ve heard in my lifetime to the sort of artistic evolution that, say, Dylan or Mitchell went through in the 60s. Ryan Adams also came pretty close for me in the run from Whiskeytown through “Heartbreaker” and up to “Love Is Hell” but there aren’t many others. I appreciate that puts her in some fairly exalted company but I think it’s a valid comparison; I genuinely think she’s that good. I guess there’s an argument that she wears her Bob and Joni influences too freely but, frankly, who doesn’t if you ply your trade as a singer songwriter with an acoustic guitar, and at 23 it’s not like she hasn’t still got time to transcend those influences.

I could have included a number of Marling’s songs in this list and, in fact, originally I’d intended to go with “Sophia” from her third album “A Creature I Don’t Know” – partly because I adore it and partly because I distinctly remember hearing it for the first time and just laughing at how absurdly good it was. So here’s a link to the video for “Sophia” as a little bonus: it is a marvelous thing.

For a while last year – if I’d been writing this last year – then I’d almost certainly have gone with “Night After Night”. Does it borrow a bit from Leonard Cohen’s “Famous Blue Raincoat” ? Yes (which she happily acknowledges). Does it matter ? Not really when it sounds as assured, as poised, as stunning as this. So there’s a link to that too: it is also a marvelous thing.

Or “Flicker & Fail” (very, very Joni Mitchell), or “I Was Just A Card”, or the brutal “Master Hunter”, or the also pretty brutal “Saved These Words”. There are worse ways to spend a Sunday (or any day but I’m posting this on a Sunday) than watching and listening to these.

“Goodbye England” though is the one that I return to with affectionate regularity and, in the spirit of the overall list, has the most personal associations. The song seems to be concerned with the breakdown of a relationship and a desire to escape but those aren’t the reasons that it really chimes for me (although the escape thing is something of a recurrent theme in stuff I like). Marling recounts a story about visiting a hilltop as a child with her father and looking at the snow covered landscape. So struck with the beauty of the scene, and no doubt contemplating the passage of time as his daughter grew up, her father asked her to one day bring him back to the same place, to remember how beautiful the world could be; just once before he died. It’s a feeling that you get a lot as a parent, those peculiar moments when you briefly see the world afresh through your child’s eyes and simultaneously understand how fleeting those moments are – in a way that your child doesn’t. It’s incredibly bittersweet, somehow wrapping up a sudden, strong sense of your own mortality and a desire to preserve the innocence of childhood. It’s not unhappy – those moments can be almost perfect – but there is an abiding melancholy to it. This song does that to me every time.

Sometimes serendipity lends a hand. The song begins with the lines:

You were so smart then

In your jacket and coat

My softest red scarf was warming your throat

A couple of winters ago I was building a snowman with my daughter and she was traipsing through the white stuff dressed in a red coat and scarf. I think in the context of the song that it’s presumably Marling remembering that her father was the “smart” one with her scarf warming his throat but it doesn’t really matter to me – it instantly triggers the memory of a little girl cheerfully conversing with the snowman rising up out of the ground.

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As the song develops it explores the tension between leaving and staying that Marling feels as (presumably) a relationship ends, reflecting ruefully on the nature of love:

And a friend of mine says it’s good to hear

That you believe in love, even if set in fear

Well I’ll hold you there brother and set you straight

I only believe true love is frail and willing to break

She moves from disbelieving regret (I wrote my name in your book… only god knows why) to frantically pouring out some kind of explanation in a letter (I wrote an epic letter to you… it’s 22 pages front and back) before asserting that it’s too good to be used. A moment of candid self awareness – I tried to be a girl that likes to be used – before, finally, the confident assertion that I’m too good for that: there’s a mind under this hat and the decision to go (And I called them all and told them I’ve got to move).

That middle section is brilliant; sketching out the whirlwind of emotions and uncertainty that accompanies the breakdown of something in eleven perfectly judged lines, capturing the random little asides that the mind throws in to the mix. The wry, self deprecating and I bet you that he cracked a smile following only god knows why is a great touch, as is picking up the thread of being used – from her own letter being too good to be used to recognising that she had played a part that wasn’t her, wasn’t good enough for her, and that she was also too good to be used.

The tension in staying or going then wraps us back into that moment on the hill with her father, now torn between running away (as an independent adult) or returning to her family:

Feel like running

Feel like running

Running off.

And we will keep you

We will keep you, little one

Safe from harm

Like an extra arm, you are a part of us.

“Little one” is what Marling was often called within her family and, serendipity again, is also something that I call my daughter – I doubt it’s uncommon. The “we will keep you” lines deliberately borrow from the mice’s “We Will Fix It” song from Bagpuss, a British kids show from the 70s, which perfectly distills the sense of comfort and nostalgia in returning to the safety of her parents. On another level the Bagpuss tune itself is adapted from a 13th century folk round (“Sumer Is Icumen In”), something that I imagine Marling would be well aware of and that she may well have picked up from her parents; her father was also a musician and ran a residential recording studio, her mother was a music teacher. If it is a nod back to her parents, grounding the song back in a folk tradition which they may have taught her, then it’s a lovely touch. Even if it isn’t then it’s still a delightful moment in the song, it doesn’t need the context to work.

The sense in the song is that her choice is to strike out on her own (it’s called “Goodbye England” after all) but with a promise to return:

I will come back here

Bring me back when I’m old

I want to lay here, forever in the cold.

I might be cold but I’m just skin and bones

And I never love England more than when covered in snow.

I guess as a parent that’s the best you can hope for, that your child grows up confident and assured enough to strike out on their own but always with that promise to return. Like an extra arm, they are a part of us. So next time it snows there will undoubtedly be part of me that sighs heavily and prepares to shovel lumps of it off the drive. There’ll also be part of me though that puts this record on and remembers the privileged time I spent in bringing up my daughter, the opportunities to see the world anew, and the many, many glorious, transient, bittersweet moments along the way.