I was eighteen years old in the summer of 1993. I was standing in a Galeria Horton department store off the pedestrian mall in Hildesheim, Germany, waiting for my sort-of girlfriend to figure out which sneakers she wanted to buy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I heard a familiar song and looked over in its direction, where there was a small television set playing Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers’ 1985 classic, Don’t Come Around Here No More.<\/em> And I had a moment of revelation, maybe, or call it satori, or epiphany, or enlightenment. But remember what the Buddhist monks say about enlightenment: it is only enlightenment: nothing holy.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Petty says the inspiration from the song came from watching Stevie Nicks and Joe Walsh break up. One of them chased the other out of the house, screaming after them, “don’t come around here no more!” Several of the song’s other wham-lines also came from that epic rock-and-roll breakup.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As I watched it, I couldn’t help but feel like I’d just been broken up with. Not by my sort-of girlfriend, but by everything in my past. My childhood. My home town. My high school. My everything. It was all one giant relationship that not just wasn’t working, but it had never worked out, and I had been perched on the brink of calling it quits with my past that there was Tom Petty, calling it quits with me, on behalf of my past.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once the song ended I turned around and walked the aisles of shoes, trying to find her. I was thinking of Lord Dunsany’s preface to The Book of Wonder:<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Come with me, ladies and gentlemen who are in any wise weary of London: come with me: and those that tire at all of the world we know: for we have new worlds here.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n For we have new worlds here,<\/em> I thought a moment before I rounded the edge of an aisle and almost ran into her.<\/p>\n\n\n\n For I had a new world here, and it was good, and I would no longer be looking to come around the old one any more.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I was eighteen years old in the summer of 1993. I was standing in a Galeria Horton department store off the pedestrian mall in Hildesheim, Germany, waiting for my sort-of girlfriend to figure out which sneakers she wanted to buy. I heard a familiar song and looked over in its direction, where there was a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-90","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixdemonbag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixdemonbag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixdemonbag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixdemonbag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixdemonbag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=90"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sixdemonbag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":92,"href":"https:\/\/sixdemonbag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/90\/revisions\/92"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sixdemonbag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=90"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixdemonbag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=90"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sixdemonbag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=90"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\n