Friday Music: Pretty Soon Now I Won’t Come Around

This song is about… I had this girlfriend who lived in San Francisco. I lived in Berkeley and she lived on the far side of San Francisco and, uh, her mother came out to live with her from New York. And her mother was really, really, really Catholic and so she could never stay at my house. I had to take her home every night. It was a long drive all the way from the hills in Berkeley and down to the freeway and the bridge and the across bay to San Francisco and she lived on the far fucking side of the city. And every time I drove back, I had to let her go, you know it’s like on top of everything else I had to let her go – I could never have stayed, she could never have stayed and I don’t know, one day I just had this feeling… I just knew it wasn’t gonna last much longer. Not that I wasn’t in love with her. It was even after her mother had gotten the fuck out of town. But I was thinking a lot about those drives cause I started thinking one day, ‘it’s just gonna be over soon’. For me sometimes, I don’t know – it doesn’t matter how good it is, it’s gonna be over soon, so… It’s a song about something that matters, and you just know it’s gonna go.
~ Adam Duritz of Counting Crows, introducing “Sullivan Street” in 2007

Despite his VERY first world problems (I had to drive ALL the way across town and BACK!) and obvious selfishness (I love you, but if I cannot have a sleepover, it is OVER), Duritz really hit on something while introducing this song. There is a feeling of uncertainty and impermanence we all get – in all sorts of relationships and all sorts of associations – where we weigh the advantages and disadvantages of moving on or persevering. There are glimpses of wonder in this conflicted life, where discomfort and uncertainty is overcome by commonality of purpose, path, or pattern, but all too often they are mere glimpses. We spend our time neurotically fixated on the possible problems or the potential passing of the moment rather than focused on the experience and the people involved. There is certainly something to the claim that our modern/postmodern world is overly obsessed with the new, the shiny, the impermanent – when we gravitate toward the smallest of commonalities, yet shy from commitment.

“Sullivan Street” Counting Crows

Take the way home that leads back to Sullivan St.
Cross the water and home through the town
Past the shadows that fall down wherever we meet
Pretty soon now I won’t come around
I’m almost drowning in her sea
She’s nearly fallen to her knees
Take the way home
Take the way home that leads back to Sullivan St.
Where all the bodies hang on the air
If she remembers, she hides it whenever we meet
Either way now, I don’t really care
Cause I’m gone from there
I’m almost drowning in her seas
She’s nearly crawling on her knees
She’s down on her knees
Take the way home that leads back to Sullivan St.
Where I’m just another rider burned to the ground
Come tumbling down
I’m almost drowning in her sea
She’s nearly crawling on her knees
It’s almost everything I need
I’m down on my knees
I’m down on my knees