X/Z Song Trader: "The View Between Villages"
A Gen X Rocker Discusses Music With His Gen Z Daughter
About X/Z Song Trader: Steve is a music journalist, author and musician. Lucy is a diehard music fan and college student. They have always enjoyed a father/daughter bond over music. Each week one of them picks a song and they both share their perspectives. These are casual conversations based on musical connections. Opinions are their own. Keeping it positive.
Check out the whole X/Z Song Trader series.
Lucy’s Perspective
My whole life I have found comfort and solace in the fact that if nothing else, I would always be able to find the right words to describe any situation.
I have never struggled to get something down on paper, even something too hard to talk about out loud. These last few weeks have taken a lot and I have taken a lot from them, but for the first time in my life I have found myself truly at a loss for words. Even now, a month after losing my childhood home in the Eaton Fire, I don’t truly know what to say. I decided I might have the best luck expressing my feelings through a song I have been thinking about and listening to a lot lately.
I have loved Noah Kahan’s music for a while, getting completely enamored with every beat, line, and innuendo. “The View Between Villages” was one of the first songs that really made me fall in love. I first heard it at a time when all I could relate it to was imagination, but now as I sit 347 miles from home, I find myself stuck in it entirely.
The first lyric in the song that has really captured my attention recently is:
And I’m splitting the road down the middle
For a minute, the world seemed so simple
Feel the rush of blood, I’m seventeen again
I’m not scared of death, I’ve got dreams again
It’s just me and the curve of the valley
And there is meaning on Earth, I am happy
There is something so unreal about splitting your life between two places.
I lived in our Altadena house for about ten years uninterrupted, and when I went away to college it was the place I could always come ‘home’ to. I was constantly stuck between two places, looking forward to new life experiences while falling back onto memories that I value still. But now, as I sit in a library on my college campus, I find myself surrounded by a brand new knowledge that I can only move forward from here. On this ‘split’ road I am looking forward to my adult life in college and beyond, and backwards on something that has faded into a memory.
This song’s true meaning focuses on Kahan leaving his childhood hometown to grow and expand as an artist. It is a love letter to the place he has known best his whole life and how he had to sacrifice that in order to pursue his dreams. That takes on a whole new meaning for me as I listen to the song with this deeper understanding.
I didn’t really grasp the weight of my situation until I came home to visit a couple of weekends ago. Even though you have been up to the burn site a few times, you almost missed the turn onto our street because the neighborhood looks so different.
There’s nothing quite like the feeling of not recognizing your own home any more.
Kahan captures it perfectly with this lyric:
Passed Alger Brook road, I'm over the bridge
A minute from home, but I feel so far from it
The death of my dog, the stretch of my skin
It's all washing over me, I'm angry again
That’s the part of “The View Between Villages” that captures the exact feeling I’ve been desperately trying to put into words.
It's the feeling of driving between what used to be my friends’ homes, pointing to ruins and saying, “I think it's that one,” but not being totally sure. It’s the moment when I stood up on the stone wall in what was once my front yard and was almost able to see what was one of my best friends’ houses four streets down. It’s passing by my elementary school and seeing my handprint on the only standing wall. It's knowing how to get somewhere by heart, even when it’s not standing.
Although I have struggled to find a silver lining or anything positive during this past month, I can safely say that the Altadena community has never been stronger:
The things that I lost here, the people I knew
They got me surrounded for a mile or two
Now, more than ever, I am grateful for everybody I know, every place that I got to love in Altadena, and the community that has only strengthened after the fires.
Our community has seamlessly and without hesitation surrounded one another, understood strength in numbers, and found every possible way to put an arm around those who have been affected. The Altadena community has beautifully supported one another this past month, and I am so grateful to have gotten to love, and to continue to love, this place with my whole heart.
I specifically chose the extended version of “The View Between Villages” because that version of the song contains not only an extra couple of lines, but also a few interviews with people from Kahan’s hometown. The way they describe the place they have known is a beautiful representation of my own love for my hometown, especially right now.
I felt a lot of guilt being away from home this past month, especially when I visited for the weekend. It’s hard to know that the people you care about are facing this kind of pain head-on, while you sit in class, hundreds of miles away.
The ending of the song captures that feeling:
A left at the graveyard, I'm driving past ghosts
Their arms are extended, my eyes start to close
The car's in reverse, I'm gripping the wheel
I'm back between villages, and everything's still
Steve’s Perspective
I’m so sorry, Lucy.
It’s been impossible for your mom and I to imagine what it feels like for you to lose your childhood home while your away at college, but your powerful and moving words have given me a much better understanding. As heartbreaking as it is for me to read this, I’m in awe of the strength it took to write it.
If there was any way I could turn back the clock for you and your sister, I absolutely would—but I know that’s not how things work. I suppose the best we can do is let ourselves grieve this unfathomable loss for however long it takes, stand by each other as we slowly plot a path forward, and find hope in the future we’ll all build together.
I think that’s what Kahan is ultimately singing about here.
Warts, scars and tragedies aside, he will always have strong connections to Strafford, Vermont. And even though he and everybody he knows has changed and/or moved on in one way or another, it will always be their hometown.
I know in my heart that the same will be true for you and Altadena. No matter how much it changes—whatever it ultimately becomes during this process of recovery and renewal—it will always be where you grew up. Many of the old buildings are gone, but the memories, connections and friendships you made there are not.
Whether you move back here after college or just come to visit every once in a while from wherever life takes you, this community will always welcome you back with wide open arms—starting with your mom, sister and me.
We love you so much, Lucy. We’ll get through this, together—wherever we are.
I’m so sorry for the both of you. The power of community and memory are so beautifully captured in Lucy’s raw and honest essay. But also the power of music to help us work through the seemingly inexplicable and painful events in our lives. I’m glad that Lucy found a guide song to help her through this process.
Dammit there's something in my eye.