Miles Away in The Song Remembers When

I have to be honest, when it comes to Madonna albums, I think Hard Candy might be my least favorite. The songs don’t hang together as a whole, but they are good songs. But no Madonna song have I understood more than Miles Away. It’s very straight-forward, actually, it’s pretty obvious for a Madonna song.

You know, I’m stuck here and not in LA or Paris or New Orleans or any of the other places I want to be, and all I can do is love them from afar. It’s like this song says, am I missing them because I’m not there? I reread an entry from a year ago, when I’d moved back but when I was still a comfortable 30 minutes from my mother at all times. I was so glad to get a respite from my life in LA, but that’s mainly because I was glad to finally be done with school.

When things collapsed over the summer, I found myself trying to recreate the circumstances that allowed me to survive while I was in my late-teens and early-twenties… but I’m in my early-thirties now, which means that my appetites are much larger, my carelessness has more purpose behind it, and I no longer care whether the implications of my choices upset those around me.

In a sense, I’m a lot more dangerous because I’m far away from the things and people that I love, they’re all just miles away.