February 25 - Going To Reykjavik

Sometimes a Mountain Goats song sounds like a letter from a lighthouse keeper in the middle of an ocean, recording the ways in which he spends his time and his sanity while waiting for relief and for someone to send his missives to. This is a song that can be found in an ocean of sound, overlapping guitars creating a chaos that the audience can slip into like cold water. It's lonely and it's crowded, and both relaxing and unsettling at the same time.

I spent notable portions of my life yearning for someone on the other side of an ocean. Long distance relationships are tough. Relationships that start as long distance are hard in their own way, and relationships that become long distance are hard in another. I have the joy and misfortune and great luck to be in a relationship that started at a distance, slowly came together, was so close we could feel when each other breathed for nearly a decade... and then with the bitter jolt of a public service in a global financial crisis became a distance relationship again for three months. Being apart from someone is hard and is a blessing. It makes you value what you have but it also makes you evaluate what you have. I have been in the same relationship for 27 years next month, and there were stretches of it towards the start where either of us could have quite blamelessly said it was too hard. We didn't, and not because it wasn't hard but because it was worth it. So when we could make it worth it in person we had already passed through a lot of the things that break people up.

It's good to go to where your loved ones are. It's good to have a direction of travel. It's good to have love.