Songs for going away for a little while

The journey to California is a dull tale involving the following: an overweight suitcase; three films (Carol, Where The Wild Things Are, Star Wars); a two-hour wait in line at Oakland airport security; a smooth, cool taxi ride; and a quiet arrival to a pillow-less bed.

But before that, there are messages and goodbyes, and a face crinkled up with tears at the train station. My parents shrink to tiny figures as the platform disappears out of view. I think of that over-quoted but irritatingly spot-on Kerouac line: 'What is that feeling when you're driving away from people and they recede on the plain till you see their specks dispersing? - it's the too-huge world vaulting us, and it's good-bye. But we lean forward to the next crazy venture beneath the skies.'

A few days later I am standing in a thrift store on Berkeley's Telegraph Avenue listening to Amy Winehouse sing, 'He walks away / The sun goes down / He takes the day / But I'm grown / And in your way / In this blue shade / My tears dry on their own'. It's the same sentiment, right? The initial pain of leaving, and how it forces you to look ahead, muster some independence, get on with the next crazy venture. In conversations during these early days we all admit how it was hard to say goodbye, but then the moment passed and it was like, 'right, what's next?'

I will always hate goodbyes though. They might be a necessary manifestation of everything that's good in a relationship, but that doesn't make them any easier. Aged five I cried and cried over a film in which a child is forced to abandon her favourite old toys when the family move home. The toys sit alone on the kerb waiting for the rubbish lorry. I couldn't bear it. I hate that scene in Frances Ha too, when she waves goodbye to her parents in a Californian airport, waves as an escalator lifts her away from them towards a New York-bound plane.

A goodbye is a kind of loss. You lose whatever it is you are saying goodbye to; not the people, necessarily, but the part of your life they represent, a certain time and place. It's a loss of yourself, I guess. You'll never get that old version of you back. While discussing Heart of Darkness in British Literature class today, we touch briefly on the Buddhist concept of dukkha: the pain and suffering of loss, the inevitability of it, how it can never be satisfied. But maybe the pain of loss should never be satisfied, because then we'd never explore beyond it. We'd just remain trapped by it.

Anyway. All of this is just a long-winded explanation of the mix I made before I left. Songs for going away for a little while. These songs will take you from the goodbye tears, the initial feeling of loss and emptiness and a lack of love for the new venture (or maybe the feeling of being left behind), to finding your way through the lonesome day, and the energy of newness that brings: the enjoyment of and gratitude for the experience.

Or as Max puts it in Where The Wild Things Are: 'let the wild rumpus start!'

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Songs for going away for a little while

1. She's Gone  //  Hall & Oates
2. Long Black Veil  //  Richard Hawley
3. I Need My Girl  //  The National
4. Lonely Town  //  Brandon Flowers
5. Lady With The Braid  //  Dory Previn
6. Sloop John B  //  The Beach Boys
7. Lonesome Day (live, Glasgow 2016)  //  Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band
8. Forever Wild  //  Willie Nile
9. Young Americans  //  David Bowie
10. Wagon Wheel  //  Lou Reed
11. Balance  //  Future Islands
12. Thank You  //  Nathaniel Rateliff & the Night Sweats
13. If Not For You  //  George Harrison 
14. This Hard Land  //  Bruce Springsteen

Cardiff, briefly

A long evening drive: followed the sun west as it headed over the horizon and the sky slowly turned from pale puffed-out blue to pinky indigo streaked with nude fire. The sun finally disappeared by the Severn Bridge. Headlights stuttered and lorries pulled past, hushed to smoothness by the sky. 

After testing the waters of Cardiff Parkrun the following morning: visited St Fagan's Museum of Welsh Life, a large open air assembling of Welsh buildings of different eras, from a tiny nineteenth century cottage to a large red farmhouse, a school, and a chapel that's still in use. A walk through Welsh history. These buildings have been deconstructed brick by brick and carefully rebuilt at St Fagan's, so that they are a perfect preservation of older times, even down to the charred smell of Celtic dwellings and the fusty dampness of rural Victorian rooms. In the most recent building, a cottage from 1985, trays of fish and chips sit in front of a hulking black television. 

Entry's free, and it's an essential visit for anybody who loves vintage ephemera, freshly baked bara brith, and pretending to be in a different time, a different life. 

In the evening: dinner on the bay. The air was clear and cool, the area rammed with funfair visitors, pizza-hunters, and girls all dressed up for the evening. 

Before the drive home the following morning: a walk over the river and through the park to a Danish bakery. Resisted the strong temptation to eat all of the pastries; settled for a kanelsnegle (cinnamon snail) and black coffee. I don't need to tell you that it tasted really, really good. 

Drove back over the bridge, the sky teal grey. Remembered the Scandi-noir TV show addiction of the previous winter, and how long ago that seems.

Liner notes | 04

1. The familiar top deck bus ride across north Devon in misty rain. Wouldn't have it any other way.

2. North Cornwall. Won't go a single year without a pilgrimage to this coastline.

3, 4. Meet Nelson, my gran's three-legged purring wonder. He's arrogant and affectionate in equal parts and he'll charm anybody he meets.

5, 6. The Exploding Bakery, Exeter. All station-side coffee stops need to be like this.

7. A haul from Exeter's finest record store, Rooster Records. That Stone The Crows record is my favourite music purchase so far this year.

8, 9. Some deer eat grass with all their friends. Others go solo in search of waterlilies.