October 28, 2022

HS21: TOAST 04 – Repair is Replacement

“No new leaves, except for these, on the family tree.”

It’s true: I have a fascination with leaves.  

And no sooner did I beg for the arrival of fall in my last post, then she showed up in technicolor, with the trees in the yard exploding with reds and yellows and orange.  

I took a drive yesterday out on old 86 just to get a good look before the brilliance becomes bones in an ice storm. I listened to some demos, trying to decide what to share this week, and landed on a tune Thomas and I wrote while mixing Day & Nightdriving; it’s called “Repair is Replacement.”

Lyrically, the song is a pretty straightforward collection of cliché J Ross(isms):

1) I’m to blame 2) I’m sorry 3) I don’t want to give up 4) Did I say I’m sorry?

Okay, so I probably wasn’t in the best headspace if my opener was: “this is my last chance to get it all wrong.” Yet this narrator, whomever he is or was when I wrote it, is asking a simple question: Is replacement the only real pathway to repair? Not fixing the problem, but cutting it out altogether? Can we make the big changes? He seems to be arguing that the answer is no.

I’ve now seen the leaves come and go for 4+ decades. The tree limbs keep blooming, and the one that showed red last year is a mottled yellow now.

Sometime between the time I wrote this song and my drive yesterday, I changed my mind. I do believe we can fix things.

There is a prevailing thought among the people I choose to spend time with: the world is improvable. Those are the people I want to watch the leaves blossom and fall with. 

So go take a drive, and hold on with me.

Yours,

JR