Jack attended the wedding reluctantly. The bride had been his girlfriend long ago and more recently his friend, though once a month or so he had to convince someone that he no longer carried a torch, and that meant first convincing himself. “At least it’s not a destination wedding,” said Daniella, another mutual friend. “That would be hard to explain. I mean, why are you getting on a plane and flying for hours if you’re not still hung up on her?” Jack rode to the church with Daniella and her boyfriend Gerrit. Thoughts swam in his head like goldfish, innocent and not long for this world. Years later, he recorded a song called “The Pathway.” Although the song also took place at a wedding, and also featured a man who was lamenting the loss of the woman he considered to be his true love, the setting was not a church in town but a large stone house with a succession of “unpopulated formal rooms” (in the song it was rhymed with “inoculations, storms, and fumes”). In the song, the man did not stand timidly as the bride and groom exchanged vows. He took action. The song ended with a repetition of the chorus: “The earth was scorched / The place was torched.” He reused the line about the goldfish because he liked it.
©2020 Ben Greenman/Stupid Ideas
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