AVA VALIANTI’s “Distant” captures wordless, painful sorrow at drifting apart from friends from your childhood. The lyrics perfectly convey your growing emotional distance from one another over time, even though you share a shared history and close relationship once. AVA VALIANTI uses plain yet effective language throughout this song, referencing feelings of nostalgia, loss, and acceptance and challenging the listener to think about how relationships can change without either party necessarily meaning for them to do so.

AVA VALIANTI creates a feeling of sadness and familiarity from the beginning. The familiarity in knowing the friend “like the back of my left hand” indicates at once how deep a connection had once been. This intimate and affectionate phrase invokes years of trust and intimacy. This comforting image is immediately displaced, however, by a feeling of aloneness in the line about being the one person in this town to know this artist’s plans. This would be a sign, then, that while a close relationship had been shared, it had been one rather closed one, a singular connection, one that would sting all the more to lose.

AVA VALIANTI’s account of recent encounters with the friend serves to illustrate how much had changed. The friend’s appearance — perfectly coiffed hair, well made-up face — is trivial in itself, yet it says a lot. It says about how the friend seems to be keeping up, leading a different kind of existence, a full one involving social commitments, while the artist remains behind, at home, nostalgic for bygone days, for the untroubled, carefree ones. The contrast betwen friend’s social life and artistic isolation certainly creates a full atmosphere of regret and wistfulness.

A digression to childhood at age 8 or 9 remains a sweet piece of nostalgia. The two are remembered as having been free and innocent, a contrast to current distance between friends. The addition of accurate details like the dance they did during rainstorms with the friend’s sister or sipped from shells at the beach are intimate and vivid. The moments are written so specifically, it feels possible to see and touch them, and they contribute to a sense of a shared sense of intimacy.

Despite all this fondness for the memory, AVA VALIANTI never sentimentalises the memory to the point where it obscures. The insistence that the friend feels “distant” now implies this gradual, yet irresistible, drifting apart. The artist makes a claim to having “witnessed” this change, suggesting a powerlessness in observing something precious disintegrate. The rendering of this feeling for distance “sickness” implies not necessarily that this drifting apart is a melancholy thing, though, but something unavoidable, a sickness within the friendship.

Questions posed by the artist to parents and siblings of the friend serve as metaphors to out-of-bounds regions within the friend’s new life. The questions are symbolic of how far apart two people are, a distance one can never bridge. One can see here clearly how AVA VALIANTI feels shut out from the friend’s current life, because parts of their life are going to remain secrets forever. Being shut out forms the theme of this song, one of a separation and unresolved pain at breaking up.

Another jolting one is the acknowledgment by the artist that “friendship’s fictitious.” That line hurts, informing us that the envisioned image of friendship sometimes fails to withstand change and time. No bitter one, however, but a wistful truth AVA VALIANTI accepts. No anger in this line, simply a matter-of-fact acknowledgment by her that certain friendships, even theirs, can disintegrate when people move in disparate directions.

The “once a month” or “on a weekday” meetings between artist and friend are portrayed in meeting scenes. These are new, fewer meetings. They are scattered and distanced, uncomfortable and unemotional. The glance-of-recognition in the other’s eyes when they meet is comprised of a combination of nostalgia and unease. They both appear to desire something more without understanding how to achieve it. The unspoken gesture of a wave goodbye with a smile is a courteous distance, a goodbye to the past.

There’s a repetition throughout the song by AVA VALIANTI, specifically with reference to the use of the word “distant,” to strengthen the growing distance between them emotionally. The repetition of “to bear witness” a few times makes this image of witnessing something happen while being unable to stop it even more potent. The adjectives added after this to bear witness — “to the sickness,” “to what’s within us,” “to the quickness,” “to the stillness” — provide depth. AVA VALIANTI doesn’t merely bear witness to death in this friend, but to conflict and emotion within.

These closing lines, and especially “No forgiveness,” are heavy. This is not blame or anger. It’s not possible to turn back. There’s a recognition here, though, that certain things, once they’re broken or changed, cannot ever be repaired by forgiveness. This gives a sense of finality to the song, a mournful acceptance that it’s time to move ahead, even in pain.

Generally speaking, AVA VALIANTI’s words in “Distant” produce a sweet, albeit realistic, image of the tangled feelings one feels when gradually losing a close friend. The songwriter is smart to present both nostalgia and pain at change side by side, revealing how a memory wounds and heals us. The language being plain and pain being a shared feeling means one can relate to this song if one lost a friend gradually. Blaming or guilt is not found in this song; rather, it’s a quiet contemplation of how individuals grow apart without wanting to. Emotional weight, powerful descriptions, and direct statements in “Distant” make it a melancholy yet real song. 

AVA VALIANTI’s ability to deliver a rather universal emotion in a form that seems intimate yet truthful is impressive. The words invite people to reflect on themselves in terms of relationships and bittersweet change life tends to produce. The song then remains one of loss yet a silent homage to what once was, leading one towards genuine acknowledgment of life’s inevitable transformations.