letter 021: i still look for our house from the freeway
dear junk mail club,
i’m a bit late, but maybe you are, too. my new song “i still look for our house from the freeway” is out now, and you can listen here and watch below :)
i grew up in a neighborhood you could see off the freeway, and i still look for it every time i drive home to visit, hence the title of the song. it used to be a game i’d play when i was little to see if i could find it amongst all the other homes, and then it became something i’d try to point out to new friends from the car, and now still, it’s a familiar, comforting habit to look and know right where it will be. this letter finds me at a coincidental time because i’ve just moved back into that childhood home in san diego and this song was my little version of reaching out to here.
it’s an odd feeling moving away, and then coming home and not recognizing certain storefronts, or realizing your favorite shop no longer exists. it sometimes feels farther away than you remember. it’s about a longing for home, an acknowledgment that i don’t check in on my friends and family maybe as much as i should, and i’d like to be better. i’d tried writing several songs for the album that touched on this, but this was the only one that made the final cut. it still tears at my heart, pulling out the driveway and seeing my mom and dad wave from the front door watching me until i curve around the bend out of sight. i’ll tear up on the on ramp of the freeway as i accelerate away from the exit i know so well. i know my mom and dad read these—so no need to worry about that since i’m living at home again for a little. :)
the cover art is a collage of photographs i’d taken while on walks around the neighborhood here. it was two years ago now while living at home during lockdown that i fell in love with the way the sun reflects off windows of distant homes. i began to photograph these reflections ever since and have now collected hundreds from here as well as my travels to other cities. this is what sparked the idea for me to call for voice memo submissions to the prompt, “what is a light in your life?” i ended up receiving hundreds of responses from you guys and now finally nearly two years later you will get to hear what they became. a condensed version of all your entries and voices exists on the album. i’ll leak that little bit of information. anyways, i taped together my favorite frames of houses on the hillside i grew up amongst, and topped off the collage with a stamp from my mom’s stamp collection she had as a kid—it seems i was destined to become postcard boy from the beginning… that was a joke guys. don’t fret.
we’ve built a site for you to collect all the stamps i’ve been releasing with each single. if you are wondering what the hell i am talking about, i’ve been releasing digital stamps to accompany each single off the album, and you collect them by saving the songs. once all the stamps have been released and collected, i’ll be sending out hand-written letters and maybe a special something to those of you who complete the whole thing. more details will come later. for now, all you have to do is save and collect. if you missed a past stamp, you can now go back and claim it by saving it through the site here: https://somewhereonahillside.com/
a closing story because these letters have been so music-centric as of late: my parents had already left, car stuffed to the roof, piling down the freeway. i, too, had already started my car to drive home, hand on the gearbox, when i impulsively turned the engine off, pulled out the keys, and marched back up the stairs of the parking garage, letting the gate clank closed loudly behind me. i undid the locks, the ones i made sure to lock good for the final time, and i sat in my empty room for a moment, blinds half closed, half open, an afternoon shadow threading it’s way through the trees and onto the floor. and then i stood up, and left. i made sure to lock the door again just as thoroughly as the last time i thought it was the last time, and then i started the car again and drove through the parking garage’s gates i used to race through as a challenge and towards the sun, towards the the two speed bumps i learned how to balance my coffee mugs over as not to spill on me when i drove out, and dodging the crack at the edge of the driveway that i’m convinced is on its way to becoming a sink hole. i delicately turned left as i always do at the intersection with the light who takes too long to change, don’t they all, and took a good long look at the market across the street that had sold me countless losing lottery tickets, and also at the donut shop where they had memorized my name and order. one time i dropped the bag with my breakfast sandwich in it on the walk back to my apartment and shamefully had to ask for another. ever since, they’ve poked fun at me, comically showing how to hold the paper bag from the bottom to make sure it doesn’t fall out again. the lady who knows my order is named gris (like the color gray, she would say). i had a flood of all these sorts of small instances that had become dear to my life while living there. i will miss them all. don’t worry, i won’t bore you now with a list of unnecessarily descriptive sentences about these things. though maybe down the line i will. :)
yours truly,
garry the fool