Because It Was He

Liner Notes

The chairs they open again

The friendship first appears as a look exchanged across a room. Someone has an idea; one man looks toward the other before the proposal is finished. The answer does not require a speech. These two have shared enough history to hear an old invitation inside a new one. The speaker shakes his head, remembering the version of himself who would have gone along.

The scene makes room for change without treating change as betrayal. Gathering keys and finding a missing coat are small acts of departure, but they also show the friends attending to the people around them. Their shared past has not vanished. It has become something they can recognize without having to repeat.

The second verse turns from that public understanding to a private question. Everyone else has left. The men are folding chairs, completing the ordinary work that follows a gathering. Asked how he has really been, the speaker begins the answer that would allow the task to continue. Then the familiar look interrupts him.

His admission is modest and difficult: he thought he would be better by now. The song does not specify what better would mean. The friend does not ask for a definition or offer a remedy. He opens the chair he was closing. What follows is time made available, expressed through an action rather than a promise.

The bridge gives that action its history. To have known someone since high school is also to have known versions of that person which no longer fit. Memory can keep those versions available as evidence against change. Here, the friends let some stories end. Recognition includes an agreement about what no longer needs to be repeated.

In the final chorus, the direction of recognition reverses. The speaker has been describing what he can see behind his friend's eyes; now he is the one being seen. The closing answer does not list the qualities that make the friendship worth keeping. It leaves two people sitting in the chairs they had begun to put away.

The opening also distinguishes the two friends without assigning either one the better life. One remembers being quick to join an adventure; the other begins gathering the keys. The song gives them different movements and a shared understanding. Neither has to become a spokesman for maturity. Their familiarity is audible in the space between the invitation and the answer, before anyone has explained a reason for staying or leaving.

That economy continues in the refrain. The look has survived altered opinions and altered circumstances, but its survival does not mean that the men have remained identical to their younger selves. What persists is an ability to recognize the person through the changes. The chorus places knowing beside not quite being able to explain. Asked to justify the friendship, the speaker offers the two people themselves instead of an inventory of useful traits.

The folding chair makes that refusal tangible. A chair halfway closed is a task interrupted; opening the other chair changes the meaning of the time left after the party. The friend chooses not to finish efficiently. He does not make his availability another question the speaker must answer. The room is already empty enough for the usual performance to stop, and the newly opened chair makes a place for what follows.

We never hear that conversation. Leaving it outside the lyric protects the admission from becoming an anecdote with a lesson attached. The important event is the change in what the speaker can say. He has moved from the expected answer to a sentence that exposes disappointment with himself. The listener receives that sentence without making it a final verdict on the person who spoke it.

Memory has a double role here. It allows the friend to notice a practiced answer, but it could also supply old stories that make another answer impossible. The bridge quietly acknowledges that danger. Letting a story end requires someone who remembers it to stop insisting on its usefulness. The song gives that discretion as much weight as loyalty, making room for a person whose history is known but whose future is not yet settled.

Time is therefore present in more than the reference to high school. It appears in the speed of a glance, the delay before an honest sentence, and the work abandoned long enough to listen. The long friendship becomes visible through a short interruption. Years have made this moment possible, but they cannot substitute for the choice to open the chair now. That is the modest scale on which the song lets affection act.

In Conversation

Other works, related questions

Worth Your Time

Of Friendship — Michel de Montaigne

Read the essay titled Of Friendship in this complete edition of Montaigne's Essays. Its effort to account for a singular bond gives the song's refrain a larger conversation without reducing either work to a definition of friendship. The useful question is not simply why these two people stayed close. It is what an explanation based on qualities or benefits would leave out. Return afterward to the folding chairs: the song gives that difficulty of explanation an ordinary action and a place to sit.

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