Goodbye (Video)

Goodbye for now, I go
Who am I? I don’t know, nobody knows
Goodbye for now, so long
I will reach for you one day through arms of song…

I saw the people form a long thin line
They surrounded me in a circle; I did not want to die
I saw a dark spot move across the sky
Her message was so clear to me: goodbye, goodbye.

Goodbye for now, I go
Who am I? I don’t know, nobody knows
Goodbye for now, so long
I will reach for you one day through arms of song…

They built their village in the northern woods
This is not my home, one day I’ll leave for good
I cooked my food beneath a veil of stars
This is not my home, I said with quivering arms.

Goodbye for now, I go
Who am I? I don’t know, nobody knows
Goodbye for now, so long
I will reach for you one day through arms of song…

They crossed the river in a long thin line
Their clothes were stacked upon their heads, piled so high
They held each other’s hands with long thin arms
Though I leave this place, I will remember you as fallen stars.

Goodbye for now, I go
Who am I? I don’t know, nobody knows
Goodbye for now, so long
I will reach for you one day through arms of song.

*

I wrote this song a couple years ago when I was redecorating my apartment in the hopes that it would magically transform my life into a more exciting one. Since I had already tried every other decorating style I could think of- and my exciting life had not yet manifested- I decided to use reverse psychology on the universe and make my home impersonal and sterile, like a business office. I ‘decluttered,’ removed pictures from the wall, and replaced cutesy soap dishes with industrial ones. I tried to make everything as white and empty as possible. I decided to stop writing songs, to make the void even greater.

And it did make me feel empty. I always get this particular sad feeling after decluttering. ‘Decluttering’ is a popular movement at the moment- supposedly all aspects of your life will improve when you release unnecessary possessions- but I am more or less an opponent of it. Without possessions to weigh us down, our minds become untethered. I learned this the hard way, having given away my possessions many times. When I left one husband and married another, I placed everything I owned, clothing and all, into one duffle bag. I didn’t even have different clothes for summer and winter, just a pair of green shorts and yellow pants that I wore both in snow and extreme humidity. Plus a pink polo shirt with green frogs on it.

Sometimes I still find it challenging to deal with the responsibility of material possessions, but that is life. It is better to be crushed alive by heaviness than to go insane from extreme lightness. Isn’t it?

At any rate, this song is an expression of the ache I felt after turning my home into a business office.