Lake Shore Drive

I moved to Chicago shortly after college, ready to settle down and make it home.  I fell in love with the city quickly through a series of summer jobs and couldn’t wait to lose my status as a visitor and temporary resident.  Life took some turns, and a year after getting an apartment in the city, my boyfriend was moving to Boston and I chose him, and Massachusetts, over Chicago.  We eventually moved back to Chicago three years later, but at the time I was heartbroken and completely confused.  How could I be heartbroken about a city, a physical place?

Stevens’ paean to Chicago helped me understand my relation to the city – it, too, is about regret in leaving places behind: “If I was crying in the van, with my friend/it was for freedom from myself and from the land.”  Listening to it conjured up the memories I had made in the city that made it so difficult to leave.  It’s hard not to be lovestruck at the sight of the skyline, driving along Lake Shore Drive on a sunny day with an ocean of a lake to your left, curving around the Hancock tower to see the downtown revealed, and in a non-sequitous, whimsical gesture, a ferris wheel out on the water.  When I heard the song it was like a postcard, but as I listened to it more, it served more as a photo album than a postcard – pulling up all of the city’s landmarks and neighborhoods at once.

People tend to either love or hate this album, and it’s songs like these when I love it the most.  It’s a far-fetched idea: “I was in love with the place in my mind.”  That is, it’s far-fetched unless you’ve experienced it yourself.