house by the tracks

build us a little house by the tracks
a big blue tarp and milk crate to sit on
sit here and wait for the trouble to pass on
build us a little house by the tracks

build us a little house by the tracks
a pack of darts and a can of krylon
paint a new language, let stars shine on
build us a little house by the tracks

build us a little house by the tracks
sleep at the station for something to see
see through this life, hidden in leaves
build us a little house by the tracks

next to the scrapyard, next to the scraps
wave at the trains and hope they wave back
leave me alone and forget to come back
build us a little house by tracks

build us a little house by tracks
beauty is every colour that’s black
beauty is every colour that’s black
build us a little house by tracks

Wrote this on the GO train from Toronto to London. There are some folks living by the tracks on which the train travels. In the summer it’s hard to notice this thanks to all the foliage. In the winter and spring you can see right through everything and it almost feels like an invasion of privacy.

I’ve never slept on the street. I’ve slept in my car a lot. For about a week I had nowhere to stay so I’d sneak back into work after everyone left and sleep under my desk. But I don’t feel like I’ve ever had it that rough, or really very rough at all. I’ve always wondered what it would be like, in the only way I can, which is a very privileged and distant way. On the one hand I have to assume it’s pretty terrible and I can’t ever imagine it… on the other hand I think we all have our uniquely calibrated neuroses and strange winding roads through life, for better or worse, and with little to no definition of what better or worse is regardless... so it also feels a bit pretentious to assume that it is categorically worse than any of the living situations we consider to be normal.

I have immense respect for people who forge paths outside the norm, who build things in places others might call nowhere and with things others might call nothing. Most of us, most of the time, obediently yield to the immense and varied pressures of everyday life… I certainly don’t want to romanticize something I’ve never experienced, but I certainly do admire the ability to push back against that pressure.

Pat’s songs about London were a bit inspiration. I also love the vibe of the Avalanche’s song Stepkids off their album Wildflower - the “pack of darts, can of krylon” is a direct crib from the “pack of smokes and a can of spraypaint” line in that song.

I don’t really know where the end of the song came from - the “beauty is every colour that’s black” came a little out of nowhere. I was kind of drifting off to another land of relaxed thought as I was writing, and those words passed through my head, and I was just turning around them around and trying to make sense of them, and I felt like there are a few interesting interpretations. I also had to search them online cause I felt like I’d heard them before, but as far as I can tell they were strung together by some other strange mechanism.

First is this idea that beauty is a dangerous concept - it’s often weaponized against us to push us towards certain lifestyles, certain modes of living, and certain modes of thinking about ourselves. We’re told that we can be beautiful, we will be beautiful - we just need to work towards and consume towards ideals of beauty, which unfortunately are often unobtainable by design so that we stay on the hook.

I’ve heard “colourful” used as a term for eclectic people who exist outside the norm, and I like the way that defines normal as colourless, as an absence of something, a complete lack of saturation and light. I think even the most colourful, striking aesthetics (and there are a lot these days) can have this same deeper lack of colour or meaning if they’re being used as tools to promote consumption and make us feel like we need to be something different than we are. There’s a nice parallel to the dawn of industrial production - the Ford vehicles that could be any colour, as long as they’re black.

And to bring this back around, I think the houses I saw by the tracks certainly fit into a colourful idea of beauty. A beauty that we build and define ourselves, that is rooted in what we already are, rather than the sickeningly colourful forms of beauty we often try to sell to each other.