my love for you will still be strong

I was seven years old when MTV taught me that this is what the pull of the past sounds like, and what it looks like, too. I didn’t even really know what the pull of the past was then, I hadn’t really felt it yet. And at that time, Los Angeles–the palm trees, the beaches, the strip malls, the big, sad, empty downtown streets–was my present, not my past.

God, that was thirty years ago. Now, this song hits me full force. Now the song itself has taken on the kind of nostalgic quality that the song has always been about. Now it is what it sounds like.

Now I hear this song or I watch this video and I see myself as a kid seeing Don Henley as a kid playing the drums. That kid’s drum set turns into a desk, his drumstick into a broken pencil, his future into his past. Me, I’m still playing the drums, still trying to find my rhythm, scared I’m gonna lose it altogether and fall into nothingness but hoping I find some way or another to keep it going that doesn’t see me behind a desk looking back at a life of lost opportunities. 

I think of the first woman I loved. I still love her in a way. In a way I’m sure I always will. I can look back and see us walking along the beach in Santa Monica. I can look back and see us doing lots of things. 

I couldn’t tell her who I really was so I destroyed what we had. 

“Don’t look back,” but I can’t stop looking back. “Let ‘em go,” but I can’t let go. These things are part of who I am and I don’t want to let go of the feeling that a love belongs in my life now, now that I’m not pretending anymore. 

The final sequence of the video is so great, the pull away from the rear projection screen, Don Henley in the rear-view mirror, him looking back at himself looking back at his life, me looking back at him looking back.