I’ve been sitting on my desk for a good minute thinking of a way to describe how I feel about the song Lighthouse by Noah Kahan. It’s been playing on loop for about an hour now. First of all, his voice is what I want to hear if my life had a soundtrack. It’s so full of melancholia, it reminds me of the golden hour.
The song gives me this very faint pang in my heart. Barely noticeable, but when I sit through it long enough, I feel it crawling in my chest. What an achingly beautiful picture of loyalty, abandonment, grief, and love.
They’re turning your house into a parking lot
It’s one thing to lose someone, to death, to time, or to a new season of their life. It’s another to lose the traces they left. It’s hard to watch the evidence of their existence be replaced and erased little by little, until what remains of them is no more.
It’s like a sobering confirmation that they have already forgotten what you’re still holding so closely. You’re left alone with the memories and shared stories with no tangible proof. You realize that there is really no turning back, that time moves forward and never back.
I sit where your couch was, say, “Go ahead and call the cops”
Yet, sometimes, attachment is harder to break than you thought. So, you refuse to let go of whatever keepsake you have of them, needlessly and thoughtlessly. Even you know that it is getting ridiculous, yet no one can convince you otherwise.
And that can feel incredibly isolating. It can get so lonely fighting alone for someone who’s already gone. But you can only hope that the lingering affection you have will soon run its course.
I curse ’em all out
When they fuck up your story
I tell it the way that you told me
Oh, to have someone stand up for you in your absence. This part specifically left a devastating blow.
I only have a very few people I consider my close circle. And every time others would ‘fuck up their story,’ I always tell it the way they told me. I do my best to protect them, their name, and their reputation. I always will. But I have also come to realize that I can’t expect them to protect me and stand up for me the same way.
But I guess I’m no better than anyone. Because God knows I love better at a distance. Maybe this is also why I resonate with the song so much. In the song, there’s the person who stayed, then there’s the person who left. I can feel for both.
Can I be honest? I prefer to leave rather than be left behind. It’s always easy for me to decide when to move away from a place or a situation. But I can tell you that the quickest to leave are the same people who linger the most in the past.
I leave with the memories tucked deep in my heart. I linger, stay loyal, and wait for attachment to die down from a distance.
While the song is about one who remains and another who departed, I believe this also applies to abandoning oneself.
But you had something misplaced that you’d spend your life tryna find
Don’t we all have a longing for something out there? We have this feeling of lack that we try ty to fill. We look for our purpose, we chase our dreams, and in the process, lose ourselves. We traded a version of us for something we do not have.
And sometimes, you just miss the past version of yourself. So, you guard the memory of who you used to be before the trauma, the heartbreaks, and disappointments. And although you weren’t able to protect your younger self, you refuse to let the world rewrite your past.
In a way, you’re not just mourning the “you” who left the town, but also mourn the “you” who stayed in the town. You stare at your wreckage and hope that one day you’ll be whole again.