remember kissing on the cobblestones (this shouldn’t be hard work)

I’ve been pinging around a couple European countries for these last few weeks that I’d never been to before, across five borders and three currencies and at least five languages, with plenty of time to think. Trains are good for thinking, aren’t they? I’d missed the steady mechanical whoosh and the panorama of a thousand possible lives rolling outside the window.

The night I got home, I discovered this song from Ireland’s Villagers. Play count says I listened 22 times.

Not only does every lyric, every hard sentiment of this song sound like something I’ve thought (or wish I had the poeticism and clarity to think) in the last week–the video might be in the running for one of my favorite Blogotheque Take-Away Shows (which is a competitive landscape). This video is the perfect vehicle, the way it starts so sweetly and a bit restrained, pausing in the doorway of the simple empty chapel, and then a raising voice as Conor O’Brien moves into the reverberating center.

When you feel that fullness, you just know. I recognize the fondness behind his eyes as he sings about these memories. There are so many things reverberating in me, too, when I listen to this perfect summation of a song, but I’m weary of laying myself bare, or trying to do it without giving away too much.

So I’ll just beg you to listen. Maybe 22 times, if it grabs you too.

Hot Scary Summer (Blogotheque version) – Villagers

oh Lord

oh Lord