The first time I saw La Joconde was 1999.  (English speakers generally know her by a different name.)  She was small and dark, but out there in the open, and you could get as close to her as you wanted.  Things have changed... she is still small and dark, but is now protected by some thick glass and special lighting and a railing, and you can't get close anymore.

A couple of years later I wrote a song about her.  By this time, I had learned some rudimentary bass skills, and I wrote a lot of songs.  Most of them were garbage, and were discarded as such.  This one, I liked enough to actually type it and print it... and I wrote the chords on the sheet in pen.  The song didn't have a name at the time.  It disappeared.

Many many years later... in fact, I don't even remember when exactly... at least ten years had passed.... anyway, I was doing some cleaning, and I found this folded up piece of paper.  I unfolded it, and behold!  Lyrics.  Chords noted.  I didn't have a song title, and didn't even remember writing it... but I knew who it was about because I had included an inside joke for myself in the lyrics, calling her "mysteriously jocular", a play on words with her name.  There is only one person I would describe that way.

When I finally got around to making an album, I felt like this song had to be on it.  This is really what drove me to come up with a title.  Why is it called "Every Last Time Is like the First"?  Well, like the lyrics say, I have come around again and again, walking through those marble halls... and she's always there with that sly little smile, surrounded by dozens of people taking pictures with their flashes turned  off.  The last time I saw her was in April.  (This was the first time for my wife.)  I stayed at the back of the crowd, I had no reason to attempt to get close... I'll never be able to get as close as I did the first time I saw her.  But every last time I get some small measure of satisfaction from being back in her home, in her city.