We're Movin' Out (To The Sounds of Kacey Musgraves)

Soundtracking our departure era as we pack up six years of memories from the little gate lodge we made a home...

“We had good times, can’t deny it, and even though I feel excited,

I’m kind of sad to leave it now that autumn’s movin’ in…

… and we’re movin’ out…”

Kacey Musgraves croons in her sweet Texas lilt backed by a simple guitar strum and drum riff soundtracking us packing boxes, our lives laid out in inanimate objects before us.

Our little mid-19th century gate lodge is a complete contradiction: historic brick walls, a traditional style of dwelling now a relic of Ireland of the past yet pushing past the front door we have filled it entirely with modern elements. Macbooks and iPads, a kitchen full of electrical appliances and gadgets, IKEA’s functional furniture in every room, flat-packed and built from the ground up with the eclectic collection of Allen keys to prove it.

The same song plays out simultaneously, following you through three rooms (kitchen, dining, living) because we have a Sonos speaker in a corner of each one, controlled by an app on our iPhones. All our lights are app-controlled too; we switched out the bog-standard incandescent ones for LEDs and can ‘theme’ each room in a colour scheme to suit the mood. Incredibly Millennial it may be, it enhances any room at any hour of the day. The irony being this house was built decades before electricity was even introduced to Ireland.

The song, Movin’ Out, is a track on Musgraves’ latest album, Deeper Well, a break-up album coinciding with a return to her country roots. Less disco-country-pop than her breakthrough record Golden Hour but the same poetic, clever, pure and sometimes heartbreaking songwriting. The same week this new album was released, in March of this year, we were handed a letter telling us we were being evicted. Thrust into our own sudden break-up after six long years.

We would have one last summer together but never again a Christmas.

“Four walls and so much space, it was way more than just a place, wasn’t it babe?”