Like a lot of people, I have a favorite Neil Young song. Mine’s called “One of These Days.” It’s about a guy who, one of these days, says he’s going to sit down and write a long letter to all the good friends he’s lost touch with over the years.

It’s a bittersweet tune about the importance of time and distance. It’s about the friends you’ll probably never see or speak to again, and the mysterious strength they can offer you that people you see every day can not (meaning sometimes we’re better off only a having a few good memories of someone than we are being stuck up their butt all the time).

It’s a beautiful song. Neil wrote it before e-mail, MySpace and text messaging, when people still organized their thoughts and mailed out their hearts in long-letters. When sending a meaningful message was still the best way to communicate, as opposed to sending a few thousand pointless ones just to say “Hey, I’m doing laundry.”