I Got My Driver’s License Almost Thirty Years Ago, But I Still Listen To Olivia Rodrigo

I’ve been listening to Olivia Rodrigo’s debut album “Sour” on repeat over the last months. In case you don’t know, Rodrigo is an 18 year old artist whose debut album about her first big heartbreak shook, and is still shaking, just about every music chart in the world. The album is special in that it’s not super common for a teenager to create songs an older audience would sing along to so fiercely. I’m not only one of the older folks singing along, but I’m an older folk singing along in spite of not being one bit sour about anyone these days. And that got me thinking about the love poems I wrote when I was young, and why I still cherish them with every cell of my sappy being.

The first piece that comes to mind when I follow my heart back in time is titled ‘Photograph’, which I wrote almost two decades ago. I’ve attached a new video of me reading the poem below. I loved discovering that I still have the words memorized in spite of not having read it aloud in what felt like forever. Photograph is one of my oldest poems that––pre-pandemic––I’d still occasionally share during my live performances. Doing so would commonly lead to someone asking why I was reading a poem about a person I’d said goodbye to years and years ago. The question intrigued me because I have tons of musicians in my life who don’t get asked that when they sing old love songs. So what’s the difference with a love poem? I’m legitimately curious, and find the question fascinating, so if you have thoughts on it I’d love to hear them.

When I dive into my old love poems I feel transported to another era of my life––an era where being with someone for a year felt like a lifetime and losing that someone felt unsurvivable. I remember sitting on my bathroom floor for days, feeling like I was a stick of gum being chewed by the universe. The day the chewing began to ease up, I walked out to the kitchen table and wrote these words:

Remember the night I told you

I’ve never seen anything more perfect

than snow falling in the sodium glow

of a streetlight, electricity

bowing to nature, mind bowing to heartbeat,

‘This is gonna hurt’ bowing to ‘I love you’.

After putting those lines to the page I remember staring out of the sliding glass door for a long long time. Prior to writing that, I don’t know that I yet understood loving someone would always mean making myself a sure target for grief. I was no longer fooled into thinking there was any escaping it. Even if the relationship lasted ‘forever’, we’d both still be mortal. Goodbye is one promise this world keeps.

But here’s the thing—if, in the next life, you could have a stunt double do all the hard stuff for you, would you? The breakup, the pain, the loneliness, the loss, the grief, the goodbye and the next goodbye and the goodbye after that?

My answer is No. I would not opt for a stunt double. I would not opt to be un-ruined by love. I would not opt to be un-pummeled by the opening of my heart, even if it did leave me sour for some time. I would not opt to be safe over taking a chance on life. And what is life, but love? In the final lines of Photograph I write,

I’m time zones away

from who I was

the day before we met.

You were the first mile

where my heart broke

a sweat.

May life pull salt from your pores, friends. May you be wrecked by sweetness.

May we all sing along to each and every pain we survived.

Love, Andrea 🖤

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