199. Song No. 3,002: “The End,” Aloha
Light Works, 2007

It is such a joy to rediscover songs from a band I adore. Aloha has been one of my favorites since stumbling upon the unparalleled Sugar in college: Some part of me fears I will eventually run out of reasons to love a band I’ve already loved for half my life, so evidence that there are still so many songs I’ve only listened to but never really heard is an assurance that I am delighted to be treated to.

There’s no accounting for what makes a song stick, and I’ve waxed verbose on those variables plenty enough for a while. In the case of “The End,” it was a simple snippet of lyric that finally rocked me and this song onto the same wavelength: “Leaving as I came / I won’t complain / I’m coming up with my head high and my eyes full of the end.” That willingness to embrace and head fearlessly into the end is an emotional liberation everyone deserves.

On the subsequent, obsessive relistens I gleefully gave this song, the line “And when I read the paper and I see my name / I doubt that I will ever change” jumped out at me for plainly obvious reasons. I was recently telling someone how I don’t mind that the top search hits for my name aren’t my own decade and a half of bylines but rather my involvement with my husband’s projects; I have to constantly grapple with the only line of work I honestly love forever existing in vicious, anxiety-inducing opposition with my driving need to just be left the fuck alone and allowed to anonymously exist, so anything that takes the spotlight off the things I’ve carried myself is A-OK with me. But I do love that there is a public record and digital paper trail of my evolution as a writer out there, especially as proof that as least one part of me has improved with time.

But it is that first lyric that jumped out at me that still gives me goosebumps if I’ve really gotten into the song by the time it floats on by (usually the fifth or sixth listen). Because there is really nothing better than freely, defiantly yielding to the unwritten yet-to-come, and it is the stuff than an existence at peace with the world is born of.