A reader sent in a series of questions the other day (thank you!), and I figured I’d take a stab at answering a few.

-What’s a song/lyric that’s so beautiful it rips you open and makes you cry?

Inspired by our recent stop in Tucson, Paul Simon’s Graceland’s been on my mind:

She comes back to tell me she's gone

As if I didn't know that

As if I didn't know my own bed

As if I'd never noticed

The way she brushed her hair from her forehead

I remember hearing Graceland for the first time in my single digits, far too young to have experienced lost or unrequited love first hand, but somehow appreciating the inevitability of something familiar fading into the background, from a scream to a whisper, then to nothing at all.

Nowadays, as a seasoned ne’er-do-well, I’m grateful for having loved deeply enough to be lost in the wilderness, indebted to both the snarling beasts encountered therein and fellow nomads radiating outward, knowing that feeling and being lost are two entirely different things.