Walking Me Home

*photo by Paul Janovitz

Friends are always asking me how I can stay out so late every night, because I have not asked myself, I always say something to the effect of, "I don't know."

Maybe part of it is that I believe that the second set is always better... and because the last song will be the part that comes to me in my dreams at night, and the moment of a night that lives among my nostalgic sentiments.

A few weeks ago I went to Toad on a Monday night. This has been part of my life for only a few years, where some people started the tradition fifteen years ago. But on this night, I had been there for many hours and was just exhausted- tearfully so. I walked out at the set break around midnight, and began my usual walk from Porter Square to Davis. I got halfway up Orchard Street, and without hesitation, I turned around and quickly walked back to Toad. The band was just finding their way back to the tiny stage, and I settled in again as if I had never left.

This is just one example of a time where I have started home and then returned to the music.

Last night I walked home from Toad around 2am with a couple of friends who lived near me. I felt calm and aware that I would be doing this particular walk from a Monday night Tim Gearan show, for the last time. As I walked the last stretch alone, all the memories flooded back to me. Snow storm nights, and rainy nights like last night- A heart full of love for Tim's songs, and a pure adrenaline rush from experiencing his band.

There is something invigorating about that walk. I am not a lonely woman walking home from a bar in the middle of the night on a Monday. I am someone who LIVES. I take it all in- the feeling is unmatchable, and irreplaceable. Along the way home at night, the streets are pretty quiet, and all the places where I watch people scramble from in the daylight are left unmoving and in waiting. In that quiet the horns from the Tim Gearan Band stretch out of the dark, the rain beats in time, in the distance the car wheels pass over rough terain, and that is Timmy's voice. The music is always playing, it is always mine.

So it really isn't gone is it... so why are my eyes full of tears?

Monday night, I could never forget you.