remember when it started??! i sure don’t. but i guess i did when i wrote this song many years ago. it was a foggy autumn in bellingham wa and we had BIG plans for forever. then all the sudden it was a blazing summer in a haunted house. frat boys clamoring and me writing about a lost love.
I’m kidding when I say I don’t remember. I love NOT remembering…. I love toiling in the present moment or even projections of the FUTURE… but the past is a grotesque animal. but for you the fan I can elaborate.
The year was 2012. I’d dropped out of college and was working at McDonalds. Living at my mom’s house in Issaquah Wa. In college I’d felt the same way I’d felt in high school; directionless, and I was feeling a bit guilty about wasting my grandparents money when I wasn’t even sure I wanted a degree. So McDonald’s it was. For about a year I laid patties on the grill. One night I got home to an empty house and poured myself some of my mother’s scotch. I was desperately sad. I was a passionate loner. I mean, I had passion. I had a passion that was searching desperately for something to absorb into. This aimless passion was causing me a good deal of pain. I believe that morning on the way to work I’d made a pledge to let go of my dream of ever getting a girlfriend. Earnestly, to God, I’d said “Ok. It’s not going to happen.”
Whisky in hand I logged on Skype. Who knows why? Instantly I was being messaged by a girl I’d met last year in college. We’ll call her Tiffany. Tiffany had also dropped out. She hadn’t even made it thru the year. Her restlessness had sent her to some sort of study abroad program in Costa Rica. But now it was Autumn. Sophomore year had begun, and she was back in college.
We began talking and things spiraled insanely out of control. Within the first few days she was begging me come visit. 2 hours up the I5 from Issaquah to Bellingham. “WELL I GOTTA GIVE TWO WEEKS NOTICE TO TAKE A DAY OFF FROM MCDONALDS” I said.
But somehow I did get a day off and I made the trip. What happened when I first got up there? I rack my brain to remember. I think I ate dinner with her and her roommates. They’d all moved into 614 E Myrtle St, a blue house with a red door. A truly iconic location.
(i've inserted a picture of the property here but the internet has failed to allow it jsut f*ckin google it!!!)
I was very shy but happy to be there. Tiffany didn’t care much about going to class. We slept late and went to Harris Ave Cafe (since burned down in a fire) in the sleepy afternoon.
I visited once a week or so, and I was on a cloud. Eventually I ragequit McDonalds after they tried to force me to come to work with the flu. And, having begun to form a band on my frequent trips to Bellingham, I resolved to move back. So ended the McDonalds era. But it was only really when we lived so far that the lavender haze was so thick.
A year later we were broken up. I’d spent the summer in Los Angeles taking anthropology classes. I returned to Bellingham and rented a house with a few music scene boys. 1234 Ellis. The Jacuzzi House. I was sick with what would later be diagnosed as chronic Lyme disease. I laid in bed and wrote. This must have been 2014. “Remember when it started?” I waxed poetically, weeping and groaning. The whole thing had come and gone like some delerious dream. I recorded some sentimental songs.
I rerecorded this one here in the year of our Lord 2025 cuz I always thought it was a good song. It captured the feeling. All of that for a song. Bellingham in 2012 was a wonderful place to be. (Orange County 2025 is a wonderful place to be).
I wonder what it’s like now.
Anyway that is the story behind the new Watson Moon song WHEN IT STARTED. Next I will tell the story of how I wrote Pennyroyal Tea! Rofl jk that ain’t me and you KNOW THAT. (but we did do a cover)
-watson