In the Neighbourhood

It’s common for artists to draw inspiration from the foggy, purple memories of a half-remembered childhood. These memories are already filled with a lost creativity and emotion that is specific to being a kid – or maybe just specific to having a tiny, toddler brain that is fuelled entirely by the Power Rangers and Sour Patch Kids. In any event, they invoke a different type of imagination, one that is deeply personal and entirely exaggerated. But that’s what makes them such excellent creative fodder. The fantasy is already there, all it needs is extrapolation.

The rural roads and bleached bungalows that provide the backdrop for these nostalgic recollections are warped in a similar fashion. Everything is a little brighter, a little gauzier. It might be that time twists these memories, making them surreal. Or maybe all children are dosed multiple times a day with psilocybic mushrooms. I just don’t know. Either way, creative work generated via the memory of these sentimental scenes is fitting. And compelling.

Neighbourhoods and boroughs, streets and promenades – they’re a reoccurring theme in art.  In music, for example, songs like Tom Waits’ “Kentucky Avenue,” John Lennon’s “Strawberry Fields Forever,” and Neil Young’s “It’s a Dream” all ruminate upon locales that are both entrenched and lost in the writer’s mind. Young’s refrain of “It’s a dream, it’s only a dream, and it’s fading now, fading away” perhaps best captures this paradoxical state. Lennon’s lyrics are whimsical, mystical, and nonsensical, oftentimes simultaneously. It’s possible that he may be attempting to recreate his memories as honestly as possible, using language and rhyme that is intentionally strange to incite feelings akin to his own in the listener.

And Tom Waits, well, he just writes. And smokes. And drinks. And other cool things.