LYRICS

We bumped into each other
in a store down on Columbia Road
exchanged the words and hugs--
stared at faces we once knew
Down there on Columbia Road
where the air’s so thick
with colors and smells and rhymes
of our lost times,
our younger years
but we grew up,
and our clocks have changed,
but the world never...

<CHORUS>
And I saw you looking out
your window down at Beekman Place
the golden strand of hair
that always falls to hide that face
the place that you could call home
is not my home
Why---why did you have to go,
why did you have to go
back to Beekman Place.

Down there on Columbia Road
we played hopscotch without a care
I never looked in front of me
to see the fight was yet to come
On the stoops of Columbia Road
we heard old men spitting reality,
but we smiled and turned our eyes--
our younger years
but we grew up, and our clocks
have changed, but the world never...

<CHORUS>

Don’t throw that pc vocabulary in my face
Don’t try to act the fight
when the fight is lost
And don’t make me stand there
while "easy" is taking my place
And don’t worry dear,
your secret’s safe with me
disappointment gains poetry with time

Somehow on Columbia Road,
the smells don’t smell the same
but the games we played were just a game
Don’t go back to Colombia Road
no more to sit & hear the old men
yell at me, I know they know--
but I just don’t know anymore
but we grew up and our clocks have changed,
but the world never...

<CHORUS>

STORY BEHIND THE SONG:

I had been home to D.C. a lot to plan for my
sister's wedding and had re-established a friendship
with an ex-- We met in a neighborhood which
was in that "used-to-be-dangerous-but-now-is-
being-gentrified-by-white-left-wing-yuppies-
who-mean-well" stage. I was still holding a candle
for him, and the experience thereafter is well
documented in "I Wish You Were Dead To Me",
but I digress...A friend lived in a new, faux chic
condo complex called Beekman Place in Adams
Morgan, near where I met the ex. The juxtaposition
was interesting...

Within a week, I saw "The Way We Were" and
"Auntie Mame" on TV, and for some reason that
weekend I spent at home seemed funny and
sad to me, and some parts of "The Way We Were"
seemed poignant to me as well. Besides,
Barbara just cracked me up with that line,
"You didn't have to go back to Beekman Place did ya!"

Here's the result of my wallowing in too much
self pity and late night, network, movie re-runs