You might know me now as “the girl in the picture” or “the house fire person.” As I have been recently dubbed, to my face. I guess that’s one way to make a name for yourself in this town, though not the way I’d have chosen. So, how do I write a letter from home when home itself no longer exists? Since my first few letters were music-centric, I’m deciding to stick with that theme for now.
Lucy Dacus’s song Historian
has always struck a nerve with me. I’ve never been in a relationship long enough for someone to keep track of my history, but my home—she was my historian. She bore witness to it all: my child learning to read on the couch, our kitchen dance parties, and Ansel, safe and steadfast through it all. She watched my son grow taller until, suddenly, he was 11. When the fire took her, it wasn’t just wood and memories lost—it was a castle on a cloud I worked so hard on to keep us safe. Among the losses: My son’s childhood, my mother’s ashes, my sanctuary.
This playlist is for anyone who has lost a home, in flames or otherwise. It’s for finding solace in the wreckage and, hopefully, building something new.
Some Kind of Control, Ruby Gill
The title says it all but the lyrics speak to me as in a “well, shit now there’s this” sort of way. The rhythm feels like trying to get out of bed.
‘I’m going to take my time,
move a little closer to the only line
that I have ever drawn with my
only mind, regain some kind of control.”
This track is a step by step hold-you-by-the-hand melody. The building block melodies mirror the longing to grab hold of something—anything—when everything feels as though it’s slipping through your fingers. This song has been a balm for those moments when I can’t catch my breath, a reminder that it’s okay to let go and let the grief settle. It’s a very slow understanding that I’ll never see my home as she was again. A very new scent of confusion on the nape of my neck.
I Would Do Anything for Love, Meat Loaf, lyrics by Jim Steinman)
The way this song reaches for something it can’t quite grasp hits me where I live. The song’s devotion, tinged with both hope and heartache, resonates in the aftermath of losing home. It’s the anthem for the sacrifices you’d make, not just for love but for the life you dreamed of building—sacrifices that feel impossibly heavy when the dream slips away. I often do feel like I’d do anything for love just to know that life has any balance at all. That things even out and some things do work out by 40. In a sense, the thing that I won’t do in this present situation feels like it should be falling to despair, but we do, we do.
Dart, Samantha Crain
Samantha Crain’s Dart starts in an uplifting way that still captures the frantic identity crisis that comes when the physical spaces tied to your sense of self, family history, and identity as a mother are gone. If home is where the heart is, what happens when that place turns to ash?
“Like a dart towards the moon
It will fall, come short too soon
It’s enough just to throw
And I was closer some time ago”
In the song she’s the type of tepid angry women are allowed to be without being labeled as such. The frustration is pounding however. She goes there almost as a prologue to the rest of the album.
Don’t Dream It’s Over, Sylvan Esso (Covered from Crowded Houses)
I won’t post the lyrics I relate to here, because it’s pretty much every single one. I prefer this more straightforward covered version as well. I told my son, what do we want to make home into now? A word? A cuddle? He said nothing, mom. I don’t want to make home into anything other than what it was: and that was my home. If it’s a memory, so be it, but that will always be home. His loyalty struck me as more true than my attempt at healing what was broken. When the lyrics talk about building a wall between us I think of the pain that can break up a family, even if co-experienced. That’s one wall I’m not wanting to build for sure. Even the “hey now” sounds like a mom telling a child to pick himself back up and snap out of it, something that feels wrong and right to do all at the same time.
Next to Normal, Lucius
This one feels more uplifting, empowering somehow:
“Turns out I wasn’t crazy at all
I just had some walls up”
We’re navigating broken shards—both literal and emotional. My son and I see each other’s needs so clearly (see how broken I am!) yet find it hard to meet them. I want someone to tell me, “You made a nice home.” I crave those words. They’d be an affirmation that the effort—the cleaning, the care, the endless sacrifice—meant something.
But often there were never enough visitors, just endless cleaning, sans a few up for a Sisyphean task, suited for those who only came to drink what was offered, leaving behind empty cups and unfulfilled promises. A comforting, isolated lake of symbolism that only I understood the current of, starting to feel like lore. But it was mine and it was true even if I was the only one listening. Now what’s next will only be next-to-normal.
Gimme Chills, No-No Boy
I love the notion here that you can make a home in someone else.
“Skype me Christmas eve from Doha
Toast me New Year’s from Crown Hill
And if we never get back home, gimme chills”
I’ve told myself that home can be anywhere. It’s a sweet lie, one I whisper to my son and to myself as I try to make a piano my sanctuary, or as I pin fleeting moments—his laugh, or finally, eventually a kind word—like magnets on the fridge of my heart. The song asks the question of what is lasting, and what anyone can give another at all in this world, and what gifts we place worth on.
—
On the day of the fire, a Christmas ham sat in the fridge, a hopeful symbol of the holiday that would never come to pass. It would have been my first Christmas ham. Everything was set for us to return to a wonderful afternoon. We have a small family of two so no one called to wish us a Happy Christmas on Christmas morning while we were in Winslow, enjoying La Posada, but the fire department calling to relay a tiding of horrible news.
The Final Tracks
There are two songs I can’t bring myself to elaborate on, but they belong here:
- Lullabye (Goodnight, My Angel), Billy Joel
- To Build a Home, The Cinematic Orchestra
These songs hold feelings too vast for words right now—raw and unspoken truths I’m still learning to live with.
In the end, home is not merely a structure; it is strange and lyrical steps inside a box that mapped out our meaning. It’s the laughter within loss, the tears that stain the floorboards, and the music that plays though, a lullaby of resilience, if only for the baby to finally sleep.
