One Way Track

Sliding accross a snowy road towards Kanazawa to an underground brazilian night club and staying out until the break of dawn, sipping on coffees at cocos with a parade of fresh faces from all over the world. This is the one night that led me to open my "return flight" information on the internet, and with my hand firmly placed on the "cancel flight" button, flip a 10 yen coin. That evening I was particularly drawn to revisiting certain parts of my pre-Japan life, and the call to just "get on the plane and go home" was ever so strong. But the coin had other plans for me. Four times I flipped that coin, and each time, the answer was the same: stay in Japan. How could I argue with chance? Afterall, it was chance brought me here to begin with.

We, as humans, have a tendancy to let the past keep a stranglehold on us. In moments of providence, we see there is more to life than wishing for things to go back the way they were; before the argument, before the accident, before the break up, etc. It can be a new experience we've never had before that reminds us we are alive. Sometimes it's a new person who suddenly appears in our lives and challenges us to step outside of our comfort zones, to take a risk, to feel something real. The question becomes how we then interpret that experience or that new relationship. Is it a new direction in life or simply a blip on the radar screen? As it happens, I wrote a song a while back for O'pinpin that at the very least vaguely flirts with this idea:

One Way Track
Music by Saitoh Teppei
Lyrics by Johnny Di Lascio

The siren call of another world
Pull myself home with mild regrets
Alone inside, bound to earthly scorn
And feigning lights offering providence
Some think and some might say
A fading star
Should always burn away

The sun will rise again
Casting the first stone
And if you find a friend
Let love seat your throne
Gone down a one way track
How does it feel, now you’re running…
Knowing you can’t go back?

From stations echoes in the clear
Of trains that passed by so long ago
The ghosts we chased tread so far from here
Like evening hours, they turn us into foes
Our times as one have gone
We lost ourselves in all the ways we’d grown
If we’d only known

The sun will rise again
Listen, not too long
Our lives might meet an end
But my love is still strong
There’s no hurdle on your one way track
How free it feels, now you’re running
Knowing you can’t go back!

It's a work in progress!