Runaway Train

I want to rewire my bathroom light switch so that instead of an overhead fan, a really, really loud fan, turning on each time I flip on the lights to my bathroom, instead Tom Petty would play, nothing but Tom Petty.

I thought this was what I wanted and I had some lyrics about a runaway train that I wanted to hear, that that was the song I would really like to play from my bathroom overhead each time I wanted to drown out the sound of myself taking a shit. I tried finding this song online and could not find it. I found some song, "Runaway Trains," by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers but it was nothing like I remembered, was missing the key lyrics that kept repeating in my head, the only part of the song that I could remember: "Never going back." I searched and searched online, sure that there must be some other Tom Petty song I was thinking of. What I found was a Soul Asylum song called "Runaway Train," which was what I had been thinking of the whole time, and which were you not to know it was Soul Asylum would be very easy to imagine as part of the Tom Petty catalogue.

It's still a really good song, however I don't think I want Soul Asylum blaring from my bathroom anytime anyone turns on the light.

The L train started running again today after being out of commission for the past two weeks due to Hurricane Sandy. It was such a joy to ride the train again. I again felt part of this city, not some commuter on the far edges of it, felt in control in some ways, felt the convenience of being able to easily get home. It was a lovely feeling. I am not sure I have been so happy to ride the subway as I was today, probably haven't felt that same joy since those first few months in New York a decade or so ago when everything about this city had the quality of the new and novel to it. I really appreciated this train line in a way that I have not in a while.

I was at a bar earlier tonight, Duff's, and they were playing some movie muted to the soundtrack of their metal music. The movie, soundless, seemed to concern the plot of a runaway train, an eighties B action movie. This is probably why I had wanted to rewire my bathroom earlier tonight. But it wasn't a Tom Petty song I had been thinking of and so I am no longer running down that dream, others perhaps, but not that one, not tonight.