Jared Halley has a new song, “Rescue Me.” Everyone will hear it as a love song to a person. For me, I swap the “you” for a place.
Rescue is the town in California where I grew up. So with a song title rescue me, before the first verse finishes, I’m already transported back to childhood in El Dorado County. [Age 9-15, 1978]
I’ve been drowning in loneliness. That part is true now and it was true then. Hoping someone would show me. Except the someone isn’t a person. It’s the foothills, the oak trees, the horses, the dairy goats, the clean straw late at night. With you I feel bulletproof, and the you is riding free across 500 acres on a horse I loved. You’re all I dream about and all I see, which is another way of saying I only look at the good parts and let the rest go dark at the edges.
There was plenty at the edges. The darkness, the weight, the confusion of a kid who knew something was wrong but didn’t know how to articulate physical and emotional abuse.
“Come break my shackles, rescue me.” Everything I loved about that place, gathered into one spirit. A ghost made of foothills.
I used to say Rescue, rescue me to myself as a kid, because I wanted the name of the town to have a power. I don’t think I can describe exactly what I was asking for. It’s too big to pull one thing out of. But it was never a person. It was the place, and the place and that time are gone, and I’m still slipping into prayer at odd quiet moments.