45. Hoops - “Going Strong”

I Imagine this song playing during one of those garish and dimly lit high school dance scenes from an 80′s movie. Only its not a high school dance, its a high school reunion, and the familiar environment has all of a sudden transported all of these seemingly well-adjusted young adults back into the overwhelming emotion and petty drama of high school. Old crushes resurface, as do unrealistic dreams and ideals. The gym floor is suddenly a river of fading time, of trying swim upstream and somehow make up for the past ten years.

The entire room is full of existential chaos – of exaggeration, subterfuge and trying all too hard. It’s a slow motion madness, and yet amidst it all there’s one girl of focus, one glowing example of somebody mature and collected, possessing a calm strength and a security in who she is. She’s perfect, and that’s who this track is dedicated to. It’s the unrequited love of one nobody to another. She’s always been perfect to the narrator. Only now she’s blossomed, and the world finally recognizes it as well. Meanwhile he’s still stuck in the past, still as awkward and quiet as he was in high school. He’s different from the rest, and yet he’s different from her as well. He’s sitting in the shadows, drowning in the uproar, trying to work up the courage to do what he couldn’t do 10 years ago, and probably still won’t do tonight.