July 4th, 2005, I was 20 years old, dropped out of college, and homesick for the little neighborhood I grew up in and the kids who grew up there with me. Driving home from a fireworks show to a different house in the same town, I was reminded of a July 4th cookout three years earlier, when I was 17 and hopelessly in love with a neighbor girl. Feeling sentimental, I took a detour through my old neighborhood. But as I drove down the street I grew up on, there were no cookouts, no kids chasing each other through the street with roman candles, there was no one outside at all. All the kids who grew up there were the same age as me, and when we grew up and left, well apparently the fun left with us. When I got home that night, I wrote this song. I recorded this version exactly twelve years later, on July 4th, 2017, in an empty house. Summertime The perfect place for "you and I" The longest days just rollin' by The late night spark, the 4th of July And how I felt With each fuse lit, my heart melt And how you felt In my arms Now here you come like the summer heat Barefoot walkin' down a blacktop street But too long gone and too far seen Guess my mind is playing tricks on me 'Cause Freshman year It took me far away from where I said I would always care But you stayed there Now when four years come And I guess I am still in love 'Cause I decide to go back home But you are gone Now here you come like the summer heat Barefoot walkin' down a blacktop street But too long gone and too far seen Guess my mind is playing tricks on me Summertime The only place for "you and I" Nowhere to be 'til well past July And room to run but nowhere to hide Then autumn came

This is a song about falling in love with someone before you even meet them, and then being so invested in your idea of the person, that you're scared to face the reality of them. You are The words I read When words were all that I would let in You stayed Inside my head And now that's where you live I made Room for you in The gaps where other loves should have been Had I Been open then But you were better written than them I found you in the text And I found myself In love with a concept I know it makes no sense I can't help myself I'm in love with a concept You tried To let me know That you just couldn't be what I need But I Could not let go Of the perfect you that I had conceived The seed Worked deep inside The fallow, unsown tracts of my mind I'll feed This dream of mine 'Til it withers on the vine 'Cause I found you in the text And I found myself In love with a concept I know it makes no sense I can't help myself I'm in love with a concept I've lost all common sense To false pretense I'm in love with a concept When words are all that's left If I've failed your test I'm still in love with the concept

I wrote this song several years ago, after watching someone I admire tear herself apart in the wake of a failed relationship. This song makes me uncomfortable now, given the context. I was writing about a deadbeat boyfriend with substance-abuse and codependency issues. He was very clearly the villain of the story, the one leaving, the one who didn't want to stay. This antagonist and I have very little in common, and yet, years later, just days after I recorded this rendition, I was the one leaving. I was the one who didn't want to stay. If he saw you how I see you He'd never look a way If he knew you how I want to He'd hear every word you say You can tell yourself you're waitin' For your love to change him But the truth is if he wanted to stay He'd find a way You'll never mean as much to him As he means to you He barely even notices All the things you do You can tell yourself it's coming If he can ever stay clean But the truth is if he wanted to stay He'd find a way He doesn't see you how I See you when you're standing there The wind, the way it blows your hair If he did I know that he'd be here But he's gone He doesn't know you how I Wanna know just how you feel Touch the wounds that never heal If he did then he'd be with you still But he's gone And you can wish it never ended But you'll only be pretendin' 'Cause the truth is if he wanted to stay Oh the truth is if he wanted to stay He'd find a way