Lace Anniversary

Perfect fall days don't fill me
with that same
dread
anymore.
But I remember
still

The smug feeling of hearing
someone else's flight
get canceled
in the moments before my flight was also
canceled.

I'd used a self-serve kiosk
for the first time
carefully picking a window
seat on the left
so I could see lower Manhattan.
At the time
I should have boarded
I saw lower Manhattan
on the TV in the airport bar

The towers groaned and all
that it made sense to do
was order the largest beer they had
and steel myself for the perfect
fall day
outside.

Watching Rainbows turns 30

Today is the 30th anniversary of one of my first songs. I wrote "Watching Rainbows" for my first girlfriend, with whom I had a typical angsty teenage thing. We got together near the very end of 9th grade, she went off to Catholic school in Jersey City to start 10th grade. So, there were lots of letters etc. After we broke up we stayed friends, and we even went to my senior prom together.  So, all good.

At various times I've looked back and said "X was my first real song".  This is in the running for that-- I didn't know how to play any instruments but drums at the time*, but the lyrics are decent enough I think.  Since other (more famous) people have semi-famously recorded songs written when they were a similar age, I figured I'd have a bash.  I could record this in a Gedankenband version at some point, though it's not obvious to me what that would sound like. I do have a few songs that are even older, but to zeroth order this is as ancient as it gets.

With no further ado:

Watching Rainbows (solo acoustic, 2014)




*Indeed, I wasn't proficient enough at guitar to even figure this out for a few years. This uses the set of chords I retrofitted for the song in 1989. I don't know that it's what I would have come up with at the time (or at a different time), but it is what it is. I suppose I'm also celebrating the arrangement turning 25. :)