May 29 - Rose Quarter Drifting / We Shall All Be Healed

This is a fragment, an unreleased song that only exists in versions from radio stations and live shows. And as such it's easy to see the ideas that started here and came out later. The line "stared down demons, came back breathing" felt like a preview of You Were Cool or Spent Gladiator 1. And those are two of my absolute favourites.

This is a song about being a ghost, about visiting ghosts. About going back to old places, which is not something you can ever actually do.

There's a town I can never go to. It's in the north of England. I used to tell people where it was by saying "Head north from Manchester until you lose the will to live". Neil Young in the song Helpless described a town as "all my changes are there". Not all m changes are in Rochdale, but a lot of my scars come from hard contact with it. And I can't go back. In part because part of healing has been to distance myself from the place, but in larger part because it's gone. At least the version of it that I lived in and slightly loved and strongly hated. All I'd see were echoes. There's another place there and I neither know it or want to.

Maybe we shall all be healed, but healing leaves scar tissue.