Tim Lowell

I just heard this song driving home from the gym this morning. I forgot that I knew it, and when I first heard it, I was in that town and still living there and didn't appreciate its meaning. The "twitching like the finger on the trigger of a gun" to me is just an extreme and vivid way to describe the restlessness the narrator feels because he grew up in a place that he didn't belong in and was desperate to escape. The narrator is fond of his childhood. There was no violence or trauma. It was just gray and dull and stifling and he couldn't express himself there the way he wanted to. I so relate to the line "nothing but the dead and dying back in my little town." This not only refers to the people who still live there, but also to the memories of the people who shaped the narrator's life. All my relatives and many of the teachers and coaches and the other people I knew from my little town are gone now, and the crescendo of the ending really drives the point home.