Last Look (Research Piece)

“I have become a collector of last looks.” – Drew Baylor in Elizabethtown (2005)

I pulled out of my driveway, car packed with the last bits and pieces of my things with just enough room to see the reflections in the rearview. Out the driveway, to the left and towards the stop sign. I have done it countless times, with every exit from my house, with every kind of destination ahead of me. It is unspoken tradition to wave just there at that turn out of the driveway, just between the two dogwood trees my dad planted when they moved into the house the year I was born. Window down, gaze to the left, smile and wave towards the wrap-around porch of my childhood home. It is our way, as a family, of saying all sorts of things we don't say in person. I’m sorry. I love you. I forgive you.

I pressed the power button to my stereo, beginning the pilot track of the mix CD I had made for this trip. The familiar sounds of Nancy Wilson’s“60B” came easing through the speakers as I slowly turned left onto Beech Wood Court from my driveway and rolled my window down. I listened as I waved to my left and drove, creeping to the stop sign at the end of the road. Stopping there, my eyes flickered to the backwards image in the rearview mirror of the street I grew up on. This one was definitely a keeper for my growing collection of last looks.



“So you failed. Alright you really failed. You failed. You failed. You failed. You think I care about that? I do understand. You wanna be really great? Then have the courage to fail big and stick around. Make them wonder why you're still smiling.” – Claire Colburn in Elizabethtown (2005)

It was 7:30 in the morning, the sun still climbing up into the hot North Carolina sky. I was twenty, and after nine months of a sort of demolition of myself and a slow, humbling re-building, this late-July morning marked an official start to a new beginning. I am not positive why this trip in particular marked an “official” start to my pseudo-adult life and “official” end to living at home. I would be home again to visit for breaks, holidays, and long weekends. At this point in my life, I had left once for college already, breaching state borders to study music competitively at a private school in Nashville, Tennessee. As fate [my parents’ financial falling-out, my ever-changing interests, unrequited love and diminishing grades] would have it, I ended up back home three semesters later.

With thousands of highway miles driven and a back seat scattered with various mix CDs, I was back where I started, wanting nothing more than some sort of renewal for myself, having to befriend the aching feeling of my tail between my legs. I spent the next semester at home taking classes at a community college, working, sifting through my parents’ financial burdens, and letting myself accept that I had just failed with all of the grace of a child learning how to control a pencil to write his own name for the first time. I prayed. For the first time, I had no other option available than to pray for a miracle to get me into a school again and out of a house wearily bearing two decades of heavy burdens.


“Some music needs air. Roll down your window.” – Claire Colburn

Since their marriage in the mid-80’s, director Cameron Crowe has used the musical talents of his wife Nancy Wilson (of the 80’s all-female band Heart) to compose music for most of his films (including 90’s blockbusters like Jerry Maguire, Almost Famous, and Vanilla Sky). Perhaps it’s her feminine approach to a male-dominated career (which I would love to do), the romantic notions of a wife writing music for the background of her husband’s film (again, I would love to see myself in that position), or just her signature blend of folk, acoustic, and pop/rock, but Wilson’s music strikes a chord in me that makes the feeling of a storyline last far beyond the end of a movie.

“60B” appears in Elizabethtown for the first time when the main character, Drew, decides to take a cross-country trip with his father's ashes, scattering them along the way to a series of road trip mixes made by Claire, his growing love interest. The music piece, in all, lasts a little less than a minute and is nothing more than a banjo, guitar, and piano combination, but there is some beautiful weightiness that it brings to the story and images in the film. It is so sad, but it is wonderfully hopeful with all of the ebbs and flows of the simple melodies and harmonies. Since seeing that movie, this song has found its way onto countless mix CDs I have made myself for road trips, most often as the first track, beckoning me to roll down my window and re-introducing me to the trust I have in an open road. I trust it to lead me to where I need to go, to listen with an open ear to a chaos of thoughts, concerns, and prayers, to offer consolation that things go on no matter where I stop and stay a while, and the promise that it will be there as a faithful friend whenever I need to move on, however trivially close by or however infinitely far.

Sometimes I sing along to the melody of 60B, mindlessly enjoying the familiarity of the short piece. Other times I don’t, though these times are fewer and further between. That early morning in July, I did not sing nor hum along to the banjo, guitar, or piano lines that I know so well. I just listened as I collected the image and lingering feeling of a sad and beautifully hopeful last look.