The Outer Sunset
Posted by Richard Melo, June 17, 2013 12:00 pm
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Filed under: Original Essays.
Her name was "Waterloo Sunset," and she wasn't a girl (or a boy for that matter) but rather a song by the Kinks, and I fell in love just the same.
It was the late 1980s, and I was adrift. I was an undergrad at San Francisco State, and after a torturous breakup and indecision about my major, in a moment of clarity that occurs just a few times over the course of a life, I knew exactly what I wanted to do, and that was write novels.
Music never sounds better than when you're 19, and with "Waterloo Sunset," I can remember listening to it while looking down on California from an airplane window. It was the song I played when I returned home to my apartment on the night of the earthquake that knocked over my bookshelves made from cinder blocks and boards. It was a song I played on a Sunday afternoon in October 1988 when I was deciding what to do to give my life direction. I have no idea why music makes me want to write novels — rather than, say, play in ...
