In honour of the publication of Placing Memory and Remembering Place in Canada, I offer two great bands, two great songs, and two very different place memories. In Rush's Subdivisions, a lament for being stranded and somewhat lost in a non-place, where the dreamer and the misfit are all alone; in Arcade Fire's We Used to Wait, the lament is about the anomie of the wilderness downtown, where youth was spent just waiting for something to happen. Both songs and both place memories resonate very deeply for me. I left my hometown when I turned 19, travelled 600 km, and felt blessed relief. By my mid 20s, though, I spent a lot of nights in the downtown streets of my adopted home looking, waiting, and wondering what I had been so eager to find. What about you?
Rush, "Subdivisions" (1982)
Lyrics:
Sprawling on the fringes of the city
In geometric order
An insulated border
In between the bright lights
And the far unlit unknown
Growing up it all seems so one-sided
Opinions all provided
The future pre-decided
Detached and subdivided
In the mass production zone
Nowhere is the dreamer or the misfit so alone
Chorus
(Subdivisions)
In the high school halls
In the shopping malls
Conform or be cast out
(Subdivisions)
In the basement bars
In the backs of cars
Be cool or be cast out
Any escape might help disprove the unattractive truth
But the suburbs have no charms to soothe the restless dreams of youth
Drawn like moths we drift into the city
The timeless old attraction
Cruising for the action
Lit up like a firefly
Just to feel the living night
Well some will sell their dreams for small desires
Or lose the race to rats
Get caught in ticking traps
And start to dream of somewhere
To relax their restless flight
Somewhere out of a memory of lighted streets on quiet nights...
Chorus
Arcade Fire, "We Used to Wait" (2010)
(note: this video can be customized at: http://thewildernessdowntown.com/)
Lyrics
used to write,
I used to write letters I used to sign my name
I used to sleep at night
Before the flashing lights settled deep in my brain
But by the time we met
By the time we met the times had already changed
So I never wrote a letter
I never took my true heart I never wrote it down
So when the lights cut out
I was lost standing in the wilderness downtown
Now our lives are changing fast (x2)
Hope that something pure can last (x2)
It seems strange
How we used to wait for letters to arrive
But what's stranger still
Is how something so small can keep you alive
We used to wait
We used to waste hours just walking around
We used to wait
All those wasted lives in the wilderness downtown
oooo we used to wait (x3)
Sometimes it never came
(oooo we used to wait)
Sometimes it never came
(oooo we used to wait)
Still moving through the pain
I'm gonna write a letter to my true love
I'm gonna sign my name
Like a patient on a table
I wanna walk again gonna move through the pain
Now our lives are changing fast (x2)
Hope that something pure can last (x2)
oooo we used to wait (x3)
Sometimes it never came
(oooo we used to wait)
Sometimes it never came
(oooo we used to wait)
Still moving through the pain
(oooooo)
we used to wait (x3)
We used to wait for it (x2)
Now we're screaming sing the chorus again
We used to wait for it
We used to wait for it
Now we're screaming sing the chorus again
I used to wait for it (x2)
Hear my voice screaming sing the chorus again
Wait for it (x3)
