Soul Journey (rec)
how can I always be traveling but never go anywhere?
Starrider isn’t a love song in the way most people mean it. Not the kind of lyrics that scream 'hey babe, we're meant to be', and it never promises to stay. It’s a song about moving without apology—the same way we don’t apologize for breathing. Prose about stepping onto something luminous as it passes, not because it’s safe, but because it’s alive. Alive in a way we start life, but then somehow manage to be anesthetized against.
Gates are sighted, not entered. Meaning appears, and instead of stopping, the song accelerates. That matters to me. I’ve learned that the moments that feel most true don’t ask me to arrive; they ask me to remain awake while moving.
What makes Starrider dangerous and beautiful is that it never hands responsibility to another person. It doesn’t say come to me, save me, stay with me. It says show me where you are. Orientation instead of possession. Alignment instead not capture. And that’s all I’ve ever asked. There’s a trust here—not in outcomes, but in growth. Control belongs to those who know, and knowing is earned by staying in motion long enough to be changed by it.
I hear this song now as a kind of vow. Not to leave, and not to land, but to keep choosing, eyes and heart open while time burns. To love without asking someone else to be the answer. To move forward without pretending that movement guarantees happiness. If I’m riding anything, it’s not toward escape—it’s toward becoming. And if someone rides alongside me for a while, that’s a gift. The sky is wide enough for both of us.
Danger Will Robinson
Bright Baby Blues is simply irresistible. It feels like an old coat that everyone knows me for. And those that don’t, they say, “yeah, that looks right in him.”
There’s a line in Your Bright Baby Blues that catches me every time—not because it’s wrong, but because it’s tempting.
“Baby you can free me / All in the power of your sweet tenderness.”
I’ve lived long enough to know how persuasive that idea can be: that closeness might finish a job I’ve been carrying alone, that another person’s care could smooth the last rough edge. It’s a beautiful thought, and I want it. So bad. But, It’s also a heavy one. These days I hear that line less as a wish and more as a warning—not against love, but against mistaking tenderness for agency. Love can accompany the work. It can’t do it for us.
What I love about this song is how clearly it sees her—the brightness, the watchfulness, the way she stands just slightly apart from the game even while playing it. That recognition feels accurate, not blaming. But the song also tries to hand her a role she never asked for: guide, gatekeeper, savior. The hidden passage through the garden wall. Or, maybe it’s my garden. And I always kept that portal to see a life I could never have. She doesn’t strike me as someone who wants to pull another person through their life, or be the answer that lets someone finally arrive. She feels more like someone who walks alongside—present, luminous, but not responsible for anyone else’s crossing.
What these songs keep teaching me—Starrider, The Pretender, The Fuse, —is that meaning doesn’t come from being rescued or from stopping motion altogether. It comes from choosing how to move while time is burning. I want to walk openly. If someone walks with me, that’s a gift—not a solution. And if they don’t, the work is still mine. That feels less romantic, but honest. And honesty, I’m learning, is its own kind of tenderness.
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STARRIDER
“I stole a ride on a passing star”
Impulse over plan. Choice without guarantee.
“Not knowing where I was going / How near or how far”
Curiosity without destination. Motion without map.
“Through years of light, lands of future and past”
Time collapses; experience outweighs chronology.
“Until the heavenly gates / Were sighted at last”
Recognition, not arrival. Seeing meaning without stopping.
“Starrider, rider, rider / Take me to the stars”
Asking the universe, not a person, to carry her onward.
“Starrider, rider, rider / Show me where you are”
Orientation, not possession. Presence without demand.
“Northern lights flashed by / And then they were gone”
Beauty allowed to be transient.
“And as old stars would die / So the new ones were born”
Change without tragedy. Renewal as natural law.
“And ever on I sailed / Celestial ways”
Meaning increases motion, not rest.
“And in the light of my years / Shone the rest of my days”
Experience becomes illumination.
“Speed increasing”
Trust produces acceleration.
“All control is in the hands of those who know”
Authority through understanding, not force.
“Will they help us grow”
Growth as the sole test.
“To one day be starriders”
Identity is achieved through motion, not claimed.
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THE PRETENDER
“I’m going to rent myself a house / In the shade of the freeway”
Life built near movement, not inside it.
“I’m going to pack my lunch…go to work each day”
Routine as consent, not coercion.
“I’ll go on home and lay my body down”
The body treated as equipment.
“I’ll get up and do it again”
Repetition replaces expansion.
“Amen”
Sanctifying compromise.
“I want to know what became of the changes / We waited for love to bring”
Remembered belief that love would restructure life.
“Were they only the fitful dreams…”
Questioning whether hope was ever real.
“I’ve been aware of the time going by”
Mortality acknowledged quietly.
“You’ll get up and do it again”
The trap universalized.
“Caught between the longing for love / And the struggle for the legal tender”
The thesis: desire vs survival.
“Where the sirens sing and the church bells ring”
The sacred and seductive coexist unresolved.
“Veterans dream of the fight…”
Glory reduced to memory.
“Children wait for the ice cream vendor”
Even joy requires patience.
“Out into the cool of the evening strolls the Pretender”
Adaptation, not villainy.
“He knows that all his hopes and dreams begin and end there”
Dreams fenced, not destroyed.
“Laughter of the lovers…”
Others still risk everything.
“Ships bearing their dreams sail out of sight”
Dreams depart rather than fail.
“I’m going to find myself a girl…”
Love as repair strategy.
“Paint-by-number dreams”
No blank canvas left.
“Dark glasses on”
Avoidance aestheticized.
“We’ll make love…do it again”
Even intimacy absorbed into routine.
“I’m going to be a happy idiot”
Happiness as survival tactic.
“Ads take aim…”
Desire monetized.
“True love could have been a contender”
Love didn’t fail—it lost priority.
“Say a prayer for the Pretender”
Witness requested, not rescue.
“Only to surrender”
Gradual compliance, not collapse.
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THE FUSE
“It’s coming from so far away”
Intuition before clarity.
“Music or the wind through an open door”
Meaning vs accident; openness already exists.
“Fire high in the empty sky”
Contact point between inner and outer worlds.
“Long distance loneliness”
Civilizational solitude, not personal.
“Years spent lost in the mystery fall away”
Confusion dissolves.
“Only the sound of the drum”
Life reduced to rhythm.
“It speaks to the heart of me”
Recognition, not instruction.
“You are what you choose to be”
Identity as responsibility.
“It’s whatever it is you see that life will become”
Attention shapes destiny.
“You have nothing to lose”
Attachment exposed as illusion.
“Time runs like a fuse”
Finite, burning, irreversible.
“The earth is turning”
Inevitability without panic.
“Fear of living for nothing”
Meaninglessness as true enemy.
“Alive in eternity that nothing can kill”
Continuity beyond circumstance.
“Are there really people starving still?”
Moral awakening.
“Beyond the walls of Babylon”
Comfort indicts itself.
“I’m going to be around”
Presence as vow.
“When towers are tumbling down”
Collapse assumed, not feared.
“Tune my spirit to the gentle sound”
Attention as discipline.
“Waters lapping on higher ground”
Survival with grace.
“Children laughing”
Continuation, not permanence.
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YOUR BRIGHT BABY BLUES —
“Sitting down by the highway”
Paused while life accelerates.
“Everybody’s going somewhere”
Urgency mistaken for purpose.
“Lives are justified”
Existence treated as something to earn.
“Pray to God…let me slide”
Request for grace.
“Can’t get away from me”
The self as inescapable terrain.
“A day away from where I want to be”
Permanent near-arrival.
“Running home like a river to the sea”
Return replaces escape.
“You can free me…sweet tenderness”
Agency handed outward (dangerous).
“Bright baby blues”
Brightness as distance.
“Don’t like to lose”
Risk-averse longing.
“Watching from the sidelines”
Self-observation over inhabitation.
“Turn down your radio”
Noise replacing presence.
“Love stirring in my soul”
Connection is real but intermittent.
“Feeling of peace hard to come by”
Peace is rare.
“Thought I was flying”
Temporary transcendence.
“Standing on my knees”
Illusion breaks.
“Someone to help me please”
Naked need.
“Hole in your garden wall”
Secret passage, not door.
“Pull me through”
Asking another to perform the crossing.
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Thank you for coming here and walking through the garden of my mind. No day is as brilliant in its moment as it is gilded in memory. Embrace your experience and relish gorgeous recollection.
Into every life a little light will shine. Thank you for being my luminance in whatever capacity you may. Shine on, you brilliant souls!
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