All right… Why a duck?

I walked along the aqueduct just before the dawn...

I walked along the aqueduct
just before the dawn.
The sun looked old and tired as it came up
but at least now the night is gone…

The old college try.

One last night of talking. Crying. Yelling, maybe. Holding each other quietly. And then walking out into the morning air and knowing nothing will ever be the same again.

Do it enough times, you get good at it.

I had favorite spots I’d go when I was nursing a broken heart. I don’t want to give them away… especially since some of them were also my favorite spots for winning a girl over… crashing surf has often had a positive affect on my love life. It’s the ions or something.

But there aren’t any good aqueducts around here, though. Not that I know of. Maybe some up in the mountains. So that part of this song was pretty much fiction. Southern California leans more toward concrete-trapped rivers… which have their own parched charm, I suppose but have never drawn me through the hazy nether-consciousness of a broken heart as have various seaside cliffs, dumpy oil well-covered hills overlooking endless grids of twinkling lights, or lonely stretches of sand.

But I have strolled along a few aqueducts in North America and Europe and I thought there was something kind of evocative about the notion.

Also, characters in my songs had walked by oceans, rivers, streams, floated on ponds, splashed in puddles, driven along lonely coasts and generally explored most of the other song-worthy picturesques that come easily to mind.

That’s why.