Coming Up Close

Okay, here's is what I think happened. Young girl 19-21 visiting friend/ acquaintance/ new love. I'm leaning toward the idea of a couple at the end of summer of their freshman year with Her visiting Him.

"One night In Iowa, he and I in a borrowed car. Went driving in the summer… And I went back to my hotel room on the highway. And he just got back in his car and drove away."

The interesting thing is why would they be in a "borrowed car" when he has his own car.

The relationship simply did not work out because of simple class structure: rich girl / poor guy. Any girl that could "make a dream that's barely half-awake come true" is incompatible with a guy that's realistic, can realized that the unstated narrator young girl effervescent idealism will go out the same way the that old farmhouse with neglect:

"There was a farmhouse that had long since been deserted We stopped and carved our hearts into the wooden surface We thought just for an instant we could see the future We thought for once we knew what really was important."

She will move on once the excitement of the "newness" of a thing is gone (she's a hard core rich neophyte, he thought.) My favorite telling lines (and I have already worn out two LPs):

"We got back in the car and listened to a Dylan tape. We drove around the fields until it started getting late."

(Rhyming "tape" and "late" is brilliant.) Of course, it's dated to the cassette mixed-tape era, but the the artist mention in the line is what's relevant. Mixed-tape era in relation with Bob Dylan is around "Oh, Mercy" Dylan. But I'm thinking; the narrator is listening to the earlier works of Dylan, probably before the "Basement Tapes" in the early 70s. In which case, the tape content probably fall under one of 3 categories: goodbye songs, social commentaries, and others. Here, I think it's all about the goodbye songs. The narrator's memory, shrouded with regret, is obviously trying to reconcile here with youthful insecurities combined with intuiative realization that it was her own personal inability to commit leading to the reason that they did not married and rebuilt the "Old Farm House" into the house that in their old ages can still show that "We stopped and carved our hearts into the wooden surface." was that either he left on his own volition (disillusioned or being a realist) or that she, somehow drove him away.

"We thought just for an instant we could see the future. We thought for once we knew what really was important…

And I went back to my hotel room on the highway. And he just got back in his car and drove away."

I love this song it made me nostalgic about the pre-playlist era, whether tape or cds and of the aimless driving of youth; because it's the only option for intimacy. Of course, ultimately it's all about Aimee Mann Incredible Voice and Story Telling. Quite in the vein of James Joyce's "Araby"! Amazing!