Trading Worsts

I hit my first burst of songwriting in the summer of 2001. It was a blissful time. I would trade our worst problems then for our worst problems now in half a heartbeat. Two chambers pound. We had no idea how everything would change come September, and girls were all I had to worry about. I was living in Ann Arbor, on a break between semesters and working at a low-end gift shop on Main Street. I wrote a couple dozen songs in the months between when classes ended and when they began again. About half sprung out while I was at a writer's retreat in New England. I will never forget sitting in an Adirondack chair on the porch of the mess hall, smoking cigarettes next to a girl who was smoking a cigar. I turned to her that late afternoon and said, "I should write something that goes, 'If you have sex with me, I'll write a song about you.'" She laughed hard and encouraged me and I penned the words in about forty seconds and have had to live with that song ever since. Life was stable and fun and I was young enough to believe that I had a shot and that I might even hit. It was before the fall of the fall, before I wore out those songs at show after show, and everything was as fresh and ripe as only the summer can be. I am still living there now. - Dylan