Death and heartbreak and tragedy and all that good childhood stuff
I was bad at being a kid. The adult stuff was always more my speed.
Summer is in full swing here in Chicago, and between all the usual patio drinking/dining and weekend street festivals I’ve been trying to get out and be ultra-disciplined about running. For me, this means running 3 or 4 times a week, and trying to go on longer 8-mile runs for at least one or two of those. Thankfully, the weather lately has been ideal, I haven’t been traveling out of town, and I haven’t been super busy with work, so my excuses to not keep this schedule have been pretty lacking. Dare I say, I’m sticking to a routine, and I’m starting to be able to sort of tell a difference in my own physical shape and stamina for hard workouts. I like it. Per usual, I have no confidence I’ll be able to keep up this pace, but .. I’m going with it while I can.
Case in point — this morning I decided to do intervals training, and dear god this was hard. It was waayyy hot waayy early, and the trail was crowded and the sun was blindingly bright and I wasn’t prepared for any of this and it just sucked. I’m fine to jog at my stately, usual pace for long distances, but the second I try to.. I dunno.. push myself — actually sprint — the results are usually pretty bad. There is pain. There is great suffering. And this is how I found myself out on the lakefront trail at 8:00 this morning thinking such thoughts as, “dear god, am I actually going to be able to make it this next half mile? I’m so out of shape. So fucking old. I can’t hack this. Should I quit?? Maybe it makes sense to quit now and just walk.”
Weirdly, (masochistically?), this is what I like about running, though — it pushes you psychologically — when it’s really hard, the thought of giving up is always a fraction of an inch below the surface, and there’s so much doubt and uncertainty about whether you should continue, but if you just push those thoughts to the side — try to dig down a little more, curse at yourself or get angry or completely turn off your mind and not think at all, or hell just start singing the 12 Days of Christmas to yourself in time to your stride — you get through it. Not to get too philosophical about all of it, but like.. it’s sorta like that Robert Frost quote — where he says everything he knows about life can be summed up in three words — “It goes on.” This is how running works. It just .. it continues, until you’re done. Maybe it’s a good run, maybe it’s terrible, but.. you’re out there. Far from where you started. So keep going, damnit. No point in trying to put any other gloss on it.
Anyway, back to my 8:00am intervals training. It’s bad. And I’m starting to not really think straight, and random thoughts are flying through my head because I’m overheating and my legs hurt and I can’t breathe that well and I randomly start thinking back to my childhood (now’s as good a time as any, I suppose!) and I’m thinking about songs I used to listen to when I was like.. maybe eight? Just pure stream-of-consciousness, random synapses firing kinda stuff. And I remember this song called “The Blizzard” by, of all people.. 1950s Nashville country star Jim Reeves.
That I listened to this song when I was eight is, frankly, a little embarrassing. Obviously at that age, I didn’t have access to my “own” music. I listened to whatever was lying around in the family entertainment center cabinet thing. You know. Like so.
And like.. my parents were not cool people. They just weren’t. But they also weren’t blue-haired, bridge-playing, Lawrence Welk-loving nerds, either, you know? So I have no idea why they had this crusty, arthritic album of Jim Reeves and Patsy Cline1 Greatest Hits on cassette. It was just there. And me, not knowing any better and being the sensitive future gay kid that I was, I listened to it. A lot.
That song “The Blizzard” particularly stuck with me. It’s about a guy who’s with his horse, and they’ve been traveling on a very long journey (you guessed it, in a blizzard), and he’s almost home. In the first verse of the song, he’s just “7 miles from Mary Anne,” who’s waiting for him at the cabin with a cozy fire, a hot supper, the whole bit. But the guy’s horse is really struggling, and the song goes on to the second verse and the third.. and they’re getting closer to Mary Anne, (first 5 miles.. then 3 miles!), but damnit, the blizzard is picking up, the horse is fading, and so finally he stops to take a rest with the horse for just a minute.
From there, we jump to the next morning — the blizzard has passed, but the guy and his horse have died — 100 freaking yards from Mary Anne’s house. He didn’t make it. He stopped, because he loved his horse and his horse needed a break, and he died — icy blue hands frozen to the reins. That’s the song!2
So yes. I’m thinking about this ridiculous, melodramatic song while doing my interval run this morning. And I’m trying to tell myself to not up and die 100 yards before the finish line.
Anyway. The song is really dumb, but more than that, now that I’m home and showered (and not dead!), I can’t help but think of all the other weirdly sad, miserable songs that I liked when I was that age. I really leaned into the misery, for some reason. Just thinking on songs I can remember liking when I was like.. ages eight to ten, we have:
Leavin’ on a Jet Plane (the Peter, Paul, and Mary version). In general, I think Peter, Paul, & Mary is a great starter band for a young kid to listen to (If I had a Hammer and Lemmon Tree are real classics), but this particular song — about loss, and pain, and uncertainty and leaving the person you love.. it’s honestly pretty heavy stuff.3
Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright (also Peter, Paul, & Mary). This is actually still one of my top-5 all time favorite songs. It is so raw and angry and sad and resigned/indifferent at the same time and it’s just .. perfect. I never want to be in a situation in my life where I’m really feeling these feelings on this level, but damn. I think I can only say that because I know how much it would hurt, based on the lyrics in this song.
Bookends (Simon & Garfunkel). Again, what the fuck is an eight year old listening to this for??! A song about how time passes and we lose track of our memories, and the purest, most innocent moments that make life worth living will eventually just be GONE and we’ll only have our fading, unreliable memories to hold onto?? Fucking DARK.
California Dreamin’ (A version by the Beach Boys, off this album). It goes without saying — I had never been to California. I had no idea why someone would be all in their feelings and sad about not being there. But I thought I could at least imagine it, and I liked that part.
But you get the idea. These are all truly curl-up-in-a-ball-and-cry-it-out sorta songs! And me, sensitive kid that I was, I ate it up — because I was just really into that melancholy vibe. The stories in these songs were rich enough and tragic in a way that let me imagine the characters’ lives and what their pain or hardship was really about. I don’t know how “normal” that was for a kid my age, but.. I don’t think it was particularly freakish, was it? Like.. you can’t just be raised on Disney movies and optimized “kid-appropriate” cartoons. “Real” art — the kind where adults are dealing with complex emotions and heartbreak and fear — those things are important to learn! These were the stories I cared enough about to come back to. And as I look back on my childhood, these are also the things that stick with me. I really remember listening to Peter, Paul, & Mary and Simon & Garfunkel and loving it. The children’s books and cartoon dreck that I was “supposed” to consume — none of that made any lasting impression.
I know modern parents say this kind of thing to each other all the time — about how kids today aren’t given enough time to be bored or to explore (because of iphones or whatever). And they don’t play outside by themselves (because some busybody would report the parents to DFS). And the kids are far too sheltered and over-parented because that’s just the way it’s done now. But.. I dunno. I’m not a parent, and I don’t really have any experience to draw on in this discussion. Maybe there’s no fighting this. But … even setting aside concerns about childhood independence and autonomy — mid-20th century adult media was the media I consumed as a child, and it taught me so much — about life, and about culture and feelings. I would hate to be a child today who didn’t have access to that.
At any rate, I’m pleased to report that I wasn’t completely scarred for life by listening to such a steady diet of 1950s and ‘60s songs of despair. By the time I was 10 or so, I had discovered Michael Jackson (the Bad album, specifically). And then Cher (Heart of Stone) and Madonna (The Immaculate Collection). My transition to gay pop culture consumer was underway, and I learned to listen to music and watch movies that had at least been produced in the current decade. I’d like to think I sorta turned out ok. Jim Reeves, though.. I’m still a little embarrassed about.
Patsy Cline, of course, I will absolutely defend. She was fantastic. But Jim Reeves is basically what you listen to if Kenny Rogers is too wild and rock-n-roll for your taste.
And where the fuck was Mary Anne, and couldn’t she have maybe gone looking for her man instead of letting him die out there in the cold? Or couldn’t the dude have just gone to the house, warmed up, and come back for the horse later? This song, in addition to being stupidly tragic, has a lot of plot holes.
Particularly when my own parents actually acted out a version of this before I was born, with my mom leaving Ireland while my dad still lived there — but that’s a story for another post.