Right now, I have a favorite Hold Steady line I bellow on my way to work every morning -- namely, "she was a really cool kisser and she wasn't all that strict of a Christian" -- I adore this line -- it takes me back to all sorts of events in my life, and whatever weird, scary, or wonderful feelings I was having at the time.
A few nights ago, Lump and I were talking about other great, evocative lines that are in some ways inherently meaningless, but are ultimately so meaningful they almost knock you over. Although I'm sure there are plenty from poetry, as is our wont, we were talking about music and how much we like "I feel like a stray from your cannonball days" by Ryan Adams and "I've got a hurricane in my pocket, but no one will believe me" by Drivin' n Cryin' -- two lines that immediately shoot us back to our late teens/early twenties, when life was scary, brutish, chemically altered, and completely about possibility. "Cannonball days" -- is that not a perfect description of those times?
So, oh sage writers of the Internet, what are some of your favorite lines?
3 comments:
"Jesus rides beside me. He never buys any smokes." Paul Westerberg...he has a bunch.
Jeff Tweedy has dozens as well i.e. virtually all of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. but its the one from Summerteeth that gets me.
She's a jar
With a heavy lid
My pop quiz kid
A sleepy kisser
A pretty war
With feelings hid
"so drunk in the august sun
and you're the kind of girl i like
because you're empty and i'm empty
and you can never quarantine the past"
Pavement, anyone?
Silver Jews?
Nice call on the Wilco. I love this from Belle and Sebastian's first album:
The priest in the booth had a photographic
memory
For all he had heard
He took all of my sins and he wrote a pocket
novel called
The state I am in
So I gave myself to god
There was a pregnant pause before he said ok
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