Young people have a responsibility to look at the world in front of them and the world behind them; their children’s world and their parents’ world. To respond and adapt to changes that take place everyday, to realize that the world is always changing, but also to obey Chesterton’s fence. He writes a short story of two men walking in a field, and they come across a fence. One man says, “I don’t know why this is here, we should tear it down,” while the other man says “You mustn't tear this down unless you know why it was here in the first place.” Of course, the latter is the wiser man. So, how do we reconcile the changing world, the mistakes of the past, and, the issue more germane to this song, the ideas from the past worth preserving? 

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       I think that Drive to Topeka is the most outward facing song on the record. “Topeka” stands to represent any smaller town, not the specific city in Kansas. In this case, the drive there represents the journey toward a small town, family-first lifestyle that was once commonplace. The journey to get there is quite grueling. He is haunted by disturbing dreams, the abandonment of his partner, etc. The refrain ("there is nothing left to really keep intact, with the end of Topeka coming fast") echoes a simple idea: the small-town dream is collapsing at an ever-evolving pace. 

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      When he finally does arrive, he heads into a bar. He encounters all of the slow-growing rot and broken promise that he found everywhere else. Unhappy musicians (“the man breathed into his saxophone and the music came alive, I saw him whisper in her ear I got nothing left but time”), hyper-sexualization (“he liked a couple girls on stage, he put a neon sign outside the door and called the place Coming of Age”), and depressive waitresses (“the other barmaid has drunk herself to death”). 

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       It is tough to say if the “Topeka” life is still possible. It’s hard to afford goods, closer to impossible to buy a home, and debt saddles almost all young people. These things make that small life into a large burden to bear. But maybe, more than these things, the “Topeka” life is growing increasingly unavailable because we missed something more important. Maybe we tore down the fence.

 

Love,

NM