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Tonight in Babylon (Protoculture Remix)
Loverush UK! ft Bryan Adams
Tonight in Babylon - Single
2012

♥: Last March I listened to this song as I was coming back on the train from Toronto. It was a pretty perfect weekend with an incredibly important friend (Amanda). And it was strawberry spring: warmth, sunshine, melted snow; it was the weekend before we sat on porch in shorts. I vibrate when I think of that weekend, that time (especially now, especially remembering what, exactly, was brewing). I spent that Sunday I got back drinking amaretto, dancing to Bowie, smelling that inimitably spring smell on the back of my hands. And as Montreal pulled into view, I blared "Tonight in Babylon" -- my cells spinning inside me. I was going home.


Today I am also going home. I am excited to see my apartment. My family, friends. You. But I am leaving something (someone) behind and it is physically fucking painful to do it.

I wish there were words to express how conflicted I am.
There aren't; and at first glance this song does nothing to help, either. It's a club anthem with BRYAN ADAMS, yeah I know, as the vocalist, and the refrain is "everybody feels alright!"


But it's a little mournful. A little hard to stomach. A little twisted, maybe, in the vocals, a little dishonest. And maybe it's exactly right.
Friday night I sat on the balcony with Julie, Justin, and a glass of white wine and I wanted to cry but I held back tears because it was so bittersweet ----- this is what I have been missing in Montreal. Not drinking wine on a balcony, I can do that whenever; drinking wine on the balcony with them; with her. All my whining about friendship in the past year has been precisely this: I miss having her in my city. And I have amazing friends, but everyone means something different in a life, and to be missing this particular component on a daily basis is too much, sometimes. Much of the time. More than I realized until I saw her in person again.

We'll be celebrating, dancing until dawn
Come on dry your tears now
Put your dark glasses on


This week has been so easy, natural, so simply fun and uplifting that this song applies perfectly, until I realize that I'm leaving and I won't be able to hug her for months. It shouldn't slip by so quickly. It's not fair.

I will be excited to see Montreal as I approach it tomorrow, but it won't be the same as when I did last year. I won't be excited to see the city, or to leave the place I was in before (I will be excited to be with you, almost exclusively). I am a year wiser, a year more aware of what I've got and what I've lost. Adulthood can probably be summed up in contradictions and bittersweet moments, or at least that's how it feels right now.


But I'll be back. And the mournful tinge to this song, that pressing feeling that Bry Bry and Loverush UK! are trying to convince themselves to go out after a funeral: that will shift back to the blissful, beautiful feeling I had last year when I got home, appreciating the time I'd had with Amanda, but also looking forward to the times to come ------ and that's what I need to think about, right now. This is not the end -- just a pause.