"High Line" by Tyson Motsenbocker, Saturday, July 10, 2021

The opening track to Tyson Motsenbocker's sophomore record, Someday I'll Make It All Up to You, "High Line" is the singer's thoughts as he takes the subway from Brooklyn to Manhattan to walk on the High Line train overpass. As the singer is alone with his thoughts, he thinks about urban alienation, loss, the future, and realities he wants to deny, yet he can no longer deny. The calm acoustic guitar and warmth that the strings and piano bring the the melody as well as the female backing vocalist make this a track that works for every season, though admittedly, even in a somewhat cooler, northern city, like New York, nobody wants to be taking this kind of journey in the middle of the afternoon, despite the air conditioning on the subway.

High Line Park in Manhattan. Source.

TIME HOLDS ME DOWN LIKE A BROTHER. The High Line Park opened in 2009. In 2017, South Korea opened Seoullo 7017 borrowing the concept of the High Line. Since then it served as a first or last destination every time Josh came up to Seoul. Arriving before dinner on Friday night and leaving right after dinner on Sunday night, the newly gentrified restaurants and pubs were places he met up with friends. The train from Dong Daegu to Seoul Station arriving at 6:50 in the middle of rush hour was meditative--a process of undoing, forgetting the pressures of the week. The further he got away from the ultra conservative small town where he taught, away from the responsibilities and the denial of himself, the more he let his guard down. Seoul was by no means New York or Los Angelos, but what he found in Seoul was anonymity. The closer he got to Seoul was the less possibility of no one knowing his name. In the small city near Daegu he called home, he couldn't go shopping without seeing a student or someone who know him. In the rush of people getting off the train, Josh could just be anyone else.

NEW YORK SMILING LIKE A MONSTER IN A CAGE. Josh had only been to New York once when he was growing up. It was a bus tour around Christmas Time. There was always a big distain for the city to upstate New Yorkers. "The city is barely in the state," his dad complained from time to time. Yet in Korea, and in the States for that matter, whenever Josh said he was from New York he got questions about how many times he had been to the Statue of Liberty. "You gotta visit me in New York. Maybe when you visit your family this winter," Andy said. "I will try," Josh said committal. "We'll see a broadway play and go to the galleries. It will be fun, and a good chance to get away from your family." Josh and Andy's relationship had changed since their first meeting in C. 2014. When they met online it had been prurient photo exchanges and some dirty talk, but it was Andy's closeted Christian story that had kept the conversation interested when they finally met in person in early October of 2014. How normal the encounter seemed, like meeting up with a business partner or a language exchange. How in the conversation Josh had forgotten the dirty pictures the two had exchanged and how when they talked it was like he had been hearing his own story told back to him. How the golden light of 1 pm in October made Josh forget that he would have to be back at work in two hours. How a talk about what Josh had never before done resulted in a bathroom trip that could have gotten Andy arrested and Josh deported until Andy said, "I think we'd better stop," after getting a taste of it. In 2018, the two had quite a different relationship. Perhaps four years later it was a good time to say goodbye.

Studio version: 

Acoustic version:

Read “High Line” by Tyson Motsenbocker on Genius