The Suburbs.

Arcade Fire - The Suburbs (2010)

In the suburbs I, I learned to drive

And you told me we'd never survive

Grab your mother's keys we're leavin'

You always seemed so sure

That one day we'd be fighting

In a suburban war

Your part of town against mine

I saw you standing on the opposite shore

But by the time the first bombs fell

We were already bored

We were already, already bored

Sometimes I can't believe it

I'm movin' past the feeling

Sometimes I can't believe it

I'm movin' past the feeling again

-

One night back in grade 12, I hung out at my friend's house in Barrhaven- a rapidly grown suburban neighbourhood, just located Southwest of the city. It was late on a friday or saturday night and on my way back home, I got on a lousy bus full of people around my age- so called young adults. Based on the direction of the bus and their drunkenness, I assumed that they lived in the suburbs and were heading downtown for clubbing.

One thing I noticed was that the crowd was all dressed up in a similar way. Almost all the boys were all wearing plaid shirts, only in different colours, and the girls were all wearing thick makeups and dressed up in white t-shirt black skirt style. It's an absurd thing to judge people based on the look, but these teenagers seemed to have a lot in common beyond their clothings: identical background, neighbourhood, family income, and lifestyle. I'm sure each one of them would have different stories, but on that night I could only see people who all dressed up in the same way and who were on their way to express their 'You Only Live Once' attitude. The bus ride got me thinking about how different perspective they and I might have on life and values- one surrounded by homogeneity and other one exposed to heterogenity.

The first time I heard this song was back in 2011, when the indie band won the Juno Award for the best album of the year. I wasn't so sure about the music at first, but I did find the album concept pretty interesting. The visuals, lyrical contents, and track titles were inspired by band members Win and William Butler's childhood in a suburb of Huston, Texas (According to Win butler, the album "is neither a love letter to, nor an indictment of, the suburbs - it's a letter from the suburb."). Along the album, there is a 30-minute short film called 'Scenes from the Suburbs', produced in collaboration of the Director Spike Jonze and the Arcade Fire. It features the song with the scenes of care-free teens living in a suburban community- distant from the reality. 

Everyone would have a different interpretation of the lyrics, but I particular like this one: "The dreams you had as a kid in the suburbs with your friends are so quickly forced through the meat grinder of life that that they began to fade, even back then you were "already bored". And today while only a remnant of those feelings exist you find yourself "moving past" them again, and you only realize it when you look introspectively and it baffles you cause you know before long those feelings and dreams will be gone. Hopefully I can have a daughter too while I'm young, before I'm lost to the mediocrity of the real world." It matches with what I somehow felt in the bus while looking at the others; who were so similar to me, but yet so different.