Chris Reali

Open Road”

I was driving home late on May 2, 2019, across a stretch of 17A in New York that cuts over and through Sterling Forest. You know, that part that twists past the Renaissance Faire? Winding up the two lane highway, the first two lines of the song just came to me: “The open road is a lonely place. Just like life it’s a choice you make.” I remember repeating the lines over and over to myself so I wouldn’t forget the lyrics and melody. At some point on the drive, I also recorded a voice memo to capture the idea. Returning to the lyric a few days later, I imagined a life on the road that became endless. A life that is always searching but never finds answers, one haunted by the ghosts of a past-that-never-was. Life on this road induces paralysis: “You won’t look back, you can’t go on.” In the end, a life lived on the road is a life lived in the open because “there’s no place to hide when you can’t sit still.” For some reason, the second verse, “All your ghosts sing…” doesn’t appear in my notebook, but ideas that clearly influenced that stanza are present. My usual process is to handwrite the lyrics in my notebook before I type them out, editing as needed. In this case, I must have finished the lyric while typing them into the computer. Oddly enough, I didn’t have a title the first few times I performed the song in public. An audience member suggested, “The Open Road.” And I responded, “Yeah, that might work…”