Deserted Cities of the Heart

This week’s Cream concert and the song Deserted Cities of the Heart has reopened old wounds.

Well, here’s how it was. As freshmen in college, my roommate and I were both in the same predicament: freshman girls didn’t seem to be interested in us. They were after the older guys. We’d sit around our dorm room, listening to the live version of Deserted Cities of the Heart and telling lies about how we had all sorts of girls interested in us in high school.

Being an English major, one night I explained the linkage between our situation and this lyric:

"On this street, where time has died
The golden treat you never tried
In times of old, in days gone by,
If I could catch your dancing eye

It was on the way
On the road to dreams
Now my heart’s drowned in no love streams."

We, ourselves, were the golden treat that all those college girls never tried.