Duh

Are you ever late for the party? Certain facts, certain blindingly obvious facts, become clear to me only much time has passed. It was years before I grasped why the French have the same expression for 69 that we do.

Another late insight came to me as I made coffee this morning. It has to do with the Rod Stewart song "You Wear It Well," which is on his 1972 LP Never a Dull Moment, my favorite album when I was a junior in college. The last line of the song is "After all this, it's still the same address." What this relates to, I now realize, is the fact that the lyrics are, apparently, a letter. They begin: "I had nothing to do on this hot afternoon but to settle down and write you a line."

It's a great song, a series of wistful remembrances, many of them elliptical details of the type I was trying to describe here yesterday ("Remember them basement parties, your brother's karate, the all day rock n' roll shows"). The last line is the final detail, a poignant coda.