“Maine”

[Content warnings: loss, grief, death.]

Often, my favorite songs remind me of beloved persons or meaningful places or memorable experiences.

I’ve never been to Maine. I have no connection to Maine, nor does my European queer ex-lover. Yet, Noah Kahan’s song Maine for some reason makes me think of my European queer ex-lover. Maybe it’s the song’s longing chords and melancholic rhythm. Probably it’s also some of the song’s lyrics… 

“

Tell me, lover

Now that you made your change

Was your soul rediscovered?

Was your heart rearranged?

[…]

You don’t hate the summers

You’re just afraid of the space

[…]

A boat beside a dock in the sunlight

And nothin’ but the water and the sunrise now

[…]

I miss this place, your head and your heart

And my dad

Still tells me when they’re playin’ your songs

Laughin’ at the way that you would say

“If only, baby, there were cameras in the traffic lights

They’d make me a star

They’d make me a star”

[…]

I miss this place, your head and your heart

And my dad

Still tells me when they’re playin’ your songs

Laughin’ at the way that you would say

“If only, baby, there were cameras in the traffic lights

They’d make me a star

They’d make me a star”

[…]

Tell me, lover

Once you’ve had a change of heart

‘Cause we’re no more than the fossils

On Crescent Beach State Park, and we

Used to sing along to church bells on Sundays

And can you even hear ’em from the subway now?

And I hope that we make you proud

‘Cause this town’s just an ocean now

”

Some of the lyrics reflect how I feel about my European queer ex-lover, what I could imagine saying to them or would like to ask them: 

“

Tell me, lover

Now that you made your change

Was your soul rediscovered?

Was your heart rearranged?

[…]

You don’t hate the summers

You’re just afraid of the space

[…]

I miss this place, your head and your heart

[…]

Tell me, lover

Once you’ve had a change of heart

‘Cause we’re no more than the fossils

“

Others, instead, make me think of them as in things that they might say to me, their way of joking or teasing me: 

“

A boat beside a dock in the sunlight

And nothin’ but the water and the sunrise now

[…]

Laughin’ at the way that you would say

“If only, baby, there were cameras in the traffic lights

They’d make me a star

They’d make me a star”

[…]

”

And then, there’s one verse that probably makes me think of them because of the connection, in my own head & heart, between them and my dad, because within a few weeks in the summer of 2023 I lost both my father and my European queer ex-lover and the latter had been intimately close to me in the initial, shocking grief of my dad’s death: 

“

And my dad

Still tells me when they’re playin’ your songs

”