A song about growing up, leaving home, and eventually coming back to discover that nothing ever really stays the same. The idyllic memories of childhood are paved over, partly by suburban sprawl, but also partly by the simple progress of time. You look around and see a new generation occupying the space, trampling on your memories with the carelessness of one who has never known anything else.
There’s something intensely powerful about image of an old cemetery, quiet and empty, a haunt for the young men and women of the town to ‘ditch this noisy century’ – which is eventually vanquished by the unending need for growth. And all you can do is look and wonder…’what did they do with the bodies?’
It’s a story so universal that it could be set anywhere. But this song is about growing up on the banks of the Susquehanna. And the placement is telling. Susquehanna is Len’api, an Algonquian language, and it represents a history of continual displacement, with generations of conflict and assimilation that preceded the arrival of white settlers, and then a whole new round of conflict and assimilation that followed. That such conquest now takes place in the form of gas stations and subdivisions certainly makes the experience of strangeness and loss feel less consequential, but it also establishes a connection over the centuries. The violence has been hidden, but still lingers in these ghostly echoes.