I don’t know if Dave Keuning, Ronnie Vannucci Jr., Brandon Flowers, and Mark Stoermer realized that theywere writing another chapter in the soundtrack for my autobiography, but one song after another – “All These Things I’ve Done,” “Read My Mind,” “Why Do I Keep Counting” – well, it’s too much to be a coincidence now that the second single off Day and Age is out…
It started with a low light, next thing I knew they ripped me from my bed
And then they took my blood type, they left a strange impression in my head.
You know that I was hoping that I could leave this star-crossed world behind;
But when they cut me open I guess I changed my mind
And you know I might have just flown too far from the floor this time,
’cause they’re calling me by my name
And the zipping white light beams disregarding bombs and satellite
That was the turning point…
Twenty years ago…just start with that. The time that’s gone by since then is longer than my entire life was at that point. So I guess if it feels like a lifetime ago, it should…and it feels like several. To be honest, it barely feels real – like a movie I saw as a teenager and tried to pattern my life after ever since.
I have often said of my common-law girlfriend in 11th grade that she was at some point kidnapped by aliens and replaced with a clone programmed to be what aliens would have observed a typical rural-Alabama high school girl to be like. And maybe it’s true, I don’t have any better explanation. But in a way, that’s what happened to me. I got taken out of my normal life and thrown into a much bigger universe, only to land right back where I started – and to add insult to injury, go backwards for four years.
Well now I’m back at home and I’m looking forward to this life I live
You know its gonna haunt me, so hesitation to this life I give
You think you might cross over
You’re caught between the devil and the deep blue sea;
You better look it over before you make that leap
A few months ago, I posited a theory that something happens at some point in adolescence, and whatever we see in ourselves at that point we are stuck with for the rest of our lives. You can win an Oscar, a Nobel prize and three straight Sugar Bowls, but deep down you still feel like the nerd/fatso/zit-face/beanpole/whatever you were way back when. I think a lot of the stuff that bugs me yet has its roots in those days when I came back to Earth, as it were, and found myself on the outside looking in on what was supposed to be the big moment. It would certainly explain the obsession with not being left out, with having my team and my crew, with needing the constant stream of feedback to assure me that yes, I am doing a good job by objective and quantifiable metrics. It would certainly explain the unnatural joy that goes with single-handedly taking down an entire pub on quiz night.
And you know I’m fine, but I hear those voices at night sometimes…
If it hasn’t stopped in twenty years, I don’t know if it ever will. And you know, I’m starting to be OK with that. More and more I am accepting that I am all of that – that just because there’s time and distance in the way, I never stopped being back-to-back state champions, sports editor, or a Merry Ploughboy, or one of the Herd, or anything like that. There’s no point in throwing out the baby with the bathwater – that stuff is all under the foundations of who I am now.
the starmaker says it ain’t so bad
the dreammaker’s gonna make you mad
the spaceman says everybody look down
it’s all in your mind…