Solo acoustic version of “ok” from Hola, Sayulita! (2010), and also included on my early-years greatest hits collection Your Song Is Beautiful: 2002-2012 (2012).
This performance is from March 2021 in the old Hood’s Sarsaparilla Soda factory, my temporary home Lowell, MA for the last 8 months. We leave Lowell for good in ~2 weeks on 7/31. I will be wistful about this place, but am also ready to return home to NYC, if only for a few months. Home is home, no matter how long you’ve been gone, or how long you can stay.
A couple days ago, my phone served up some video “memories” of a 2018 trip into Manhattan’s West Village. That night, I took an uptown F from Brooklyn, saw my brother play with his band at The Bitter End, walked a few blocks around Bleeker, and went home. It was just life as we knew it pre-covid, hopefully will know again. Maybe that’s why the images fit so well over this song of enduring friendship, no matter how far-flung in distance and/or time. The videos’ random appearance was my City telling me, “I’m still here, and I’m ok, too.”
The shot of the ambulance in the middle verse, is from covid times, fwiw, and the opening shot’s from a quick round-trip to Brooklyn two weeks ago to start moving back home. Cat is working on the latest final season of Dexter up here in MA, and it was hilarious to see the book that the show was based on sitting in a front-stoop giveaway pile on our block. The image of the book being let go, for me, cemented the fact our time in Lowell is ending.
That’s what times do, of course. Times end so that time goes on.
We’re ok.
LYRICS
You never know just how long you have
Before you go
Away
So take back life; hide it from view
It will only be us and
the wind
Times are down but we’re ok
Lines are down but we’re ok
We’re ok.
You never know just how many times
You get to say
Hello
Come out with me take the f-train
Into the night
We’ll disappear
Times are down but we’re ok
Lines are down but we’re ok
{Ad libs}
We’re ok.
When you send light into the world
It scatters and reflects
But it never dies