June 28 - Attention All Pickpockets

It's interesting to move away from the Sunset Tree and towards something that feels a lot fuzzier around the edges, albeit on a number of related subjects. This is a song about change and how we cope with it or don't cope with it, and the realisation that the past really did happen to someone else, even if bits of that someone else are still here.

And you can't change this. The past happened, and a version of you was there and you have the memories, and some of those still feel like they happened to "you". Which means that things that hurt you still hurt. And things that were embarrassing still embarrass you. Oh, and as a wonderful extra treat: there are things that didn't embarrass you at the time that now fill you with shame, or fill you with shock at the things you missed. You hurt his feelings a lot when you said that and you just didn't notice. She was flirting with you. No, really. They were bullying you the whole time. They said things to set you off because watching you get angry was funny.

And the you that's not the you this happened to has to deal with that because the you it happened to is gone. As is the them who was also there.

The past is a foreign country, but it's one of those foreign countries that got broken up and redrawn. Saying that this happened while you were in high school is like saying it happened in the Republic of the Rif, or Yugoslavia. That place doesn't exist any more.