The Cardigans - Starter - Gran Turismo

I used to pull this song out with clockwork regularity. It used to be poignantly true, oh so very true. After all, I am constantly having new beginnings; at the ages of 6, 10, 14, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, and now 24, I chucked in everything I knew and started over afresh.

But this is the first time that I feel like Starter isn’t the right song for my new start.

This is the age
when my past should be gone
but it’s just stronger than the aims I have

I’ve reached it at last — that age. My past is gone. S. was the last vestige of the old me. Now I have aims, and the past is no longer interfering. Recently, and particularly today, I have felt with utmost confidence that I *can* and *will* do what I love as a career. I am going to get there. Whether in Melbourne or Taipei or London or wherever. I can do it. I have aims. I have ideas, for research, for work, for everything. I can do this and I will.

Lifetimes of changes
a strange generation
explanations never come in time

It came. Not an explanation as such, but he gave it to me. He gave me the answers I needed, in time. I’m moving on. It’s over. I’m going to miss having someone to think when I listen to music. But he won’t be there anymore. He’s now part of the past.

Starter was such a negative way to start a new beginning — because it wasn’t a song about starting and beginning, it was a song about running away from the present and taking refuge, making excuses, in the past. This is my 10th new beginning. It feels right. I really feel, clicheed as it may sound, that it is the beginning of the rest of my life. It’s the last new beginning, because when I leave Australia, and the next country after that, I won’t be running away. I’ll still be listening to the same CD, just a different track!

This is a start
that I know I’ll believe in
so I’m leaving everything behind
Keeping the parts
that I know I’ll be needing
and I breed to be a better kind

And I’m leaving everyone behind

This is the age
when my past should be gone
but it’s just stronger than the aims I have
Turning the pages
I used to hang on to
I was young and I have changed my mind

And I’m leaving everything behind

New beginning again
a bit closer
new beginning again
a little bit closer
New beginning again
a bit closer to the end

This is the time
it’s a delicate line
to the beginning of what’s yet to come
Lifetimes of changes
a strange generation
explanations never come in time

So I’m leaving everything behind

~ by orange on August 10, 2007.