SoCal, Whatever Lyrics

It was constant in LA

Punk shows whenever

Drinks like a sailor

SoCal, whatever you like

Those were the years when we

Were having the hardest of times

Why do I miss them the most

Want to go back to that house

Want to play host to a house show

A band from Toronto

Stayed five to a room

Had two EPs and no label

Had nothing better to do

Threw broken glass at the moon

Well I puked all over my room

I swore I'd never be

Hungover again

And I would get better friends

No drinks beyond 10 PM

Could not get through the next weekend

And I'm weak as a femur

Snapped clean at the Preakness

While those setting sun hedonists

Call to me from the beaches

It was a slog

I looked at charts

I took a shot out in the dark

Got myself started on a project to stop

Getting thrown out of the bars

And got into Dartmouth for a PhD in sociology

I burned the tattoos off my forearms

And hurried to the library

And the sky became darker much earlier

Than I had remembered from back out in Glendale

With ice in my lashes

Coming home to a cold stone masonry dorm room

I stop and close my eyes on the doorstep

Feel the sun of Pasadena

And the sound of a bass amp

In a burned out theater comes

Drifting through the walls of a lecture

As I'm running my fingers

On the ancient initials carved into the maple

The kid in hardcore bands

That I was then won't understand

Cause flying to LAX and back again

Was never supposed to mean something to me

And that grass isn't green

It's the goldenrod sepia of a sun-flecked daydream

Here is the place where you found out what old was

This is the state where you learned what alone does

I watched the years turn, 2010, 2012

Accumulated wealth

And kept an eye on my health

Kept the grass clipped biweekly

Collected books on the shelf

While out in SoCal

Fentanyl took first my drummer

And then my brother

So I flew out

And at the funeral, the punks looked gravely older

And they wore suits but underneath

They still had sleeves up to their shoulders

Forgotten soldiers in a war

In which they fought for themselves

Against some adolescent trauma

They couldn't see or dispel

The axis across which we each hit thirty-five

Sees one of us in the ground

The other distant but alive

Within these New England clothes

I look impenetrable

I'd like to be there with you

But I've worked too hard on myself

To cry in the grass

While they scatter his ashes

And ask why it happened

And think of the past

When we skipped all our classes

To go to band practices

Fame was inevitable

Just reach out and grasp it