In the fall of 2001, I was driving back from Houston to Austin. I had been living in Texas for three years, but still marvelled at how different the sky looked after having spent most of my life in Canada. I stopped at a roadside pullout to take in the familiar constellations tilted in their southern way above the scrubby chaparral landscape.
As I contemplated the universe, my thoughts turned to a long-term, long-distance relationship that I still viewed as current although we hadn't seen each other and had barely even talked in more than a year. We never really broke up, per se, but on that lonely stretch of road I started coming to terms with the fact that it was ending nonetheless.
Most of the lyrics came together by the time I could see the glow of Austin on the horizon. As soon as I got home, I pulled out my guitar. The music came just as easily because the mood was so sweetly melancholic.
She remained the love of my life until I met my present wife and it is still the only failed relationship I can look back on in only positive terms.
thom
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Thom ... I am listening to your song for the third time as I'm typing my comment. I appreciate knowing how "Even After All This Time" came to be written.
ReplyDeleteBefore I read your personal reflections, I had related the song to my own life experience with a kind of wonder at how your words could have such meaning for me.
Now the image of the drive from Houston to Austin that inspired you to write the song plays through my mind as I listen to you sing.
Lucy