So let's see, where were we? Oh yes, I was halfway home, I was half insane, and every shop window I looked in just looked the same. I said, "Now send me a sign to save my life 'cause at this moment in time there is nothing certain in these days of mine."
No, I'm kidding, but just partly. Those are song lyrics, Shout To The Top by The Style Council, but it was 1987 and it was in fact raining, and he was driving back from the girlfriend's house in upstate New York. She had been distant for several days, and he had been calling her over and over again that day and she wouldn't answer, even though he was sure she was home. That night, he finally decided to drive over to her house and caught her in flagrante delicto with a bearded, grey-haired old man who looked old enough to be her father but was in fact her former boyfriend.
He had unwisely transferred onto her all of his unresolved feelings and emotions about the previous girlfriends, the ones who had stayed behind in Boston and who had moved off to Denver, and this betrayal was more than he could take. Driving home, the tears running down his cheeks mimicking the rain on the windshield, he attempted to drown out his anguished thoughts and blot out some of the pain by turning the volume all the way up on the cassette tape he was listening to, Internationalists by The Style Council. When the lyrics of Shout To The Top came on, it just sounded too similar to his present condition to believe.
No, I'm kidding, but just partly. Those are song lyrics, Shout To The Top by The Style Council, but it was 1987 and it was in fact raining, and he was driving back from the girlfriend's house in upstate New York. She had been distant for several days, and he had been calling her over and over again that day and she wouldn't answer, even though he was sure she was home. That night, he finally decided to drive over to her house and caught her in flagrante delicto with a bearded, grey-haired old man who looked old enough to be her father but was in fact her former boyfriend.
He had unwisely transferred onto her all of his unresolved feelings and emotions about the previous girlfriends, the ones who had stayed behind in Boston and who had moved off to Denver, and this betrayal was more than he could take. Driving home, the tears running down his cheeks mimicking the rain on the windshield, he attempted to drown out his anguished thoughts and blot out some of the pain by turning the volume all the way up on the cassette tape he was listening to, Internationalists by The Style Council. When the lyrics of Shout To The Top came on, it just sounded too similar to his present condition to believe.
I was halfway mad, I was half in need
And as the rain came down
I dropped to my knees and I prayed.
I said, "Oh heavenly thing, please cleanse my soul
I've seen all on offer and I'm not impressed at all."
He was, in fact, halfway home; as a matter of fact, at that very moment he was halfway across the I-90 bridge over the Hudson River. There was very little traffic on the road at that late hour of night, and it crossed his mind to stop the car right then and there in the middle of the bridge, and as he did and got out of his car, he knew that even though he hadn't been impressed at all by all that he had seen, he wasn't getting out to drop to his knees and pray in the pouring rain.
The bridge was about 60 feet above the water, and he reasoned that a five-story fall should be enough to end all of this pointless suffering. The fact that it would also shame those who had done him wrong was just an added bonus. Looking back, he knows that this was madness, but he was so enraged and out of his mind with emotion at the time that a single jump seemed like a reasonable thing to do and was quite within his capability.
He could still hear the music from his car as he stood out there in the rain, and Walls Come Tumbling Down, the next and final track on Internationalists after Shout To The Top, came on.
The bridge was about 60 feet above the water, and he reasoned that a five-story fall should be enough to end all of this pointless suffering. The fact that it would also shame those who had done him wrong was just an added bonus. Looking back, he knows that this was madness, but he was so enraged and out of his mind with emotion at the time that a single jump seemed like a reasonable thing to do and was quite within his capability.
He could still hear the music from his car as he stood out there in the rain, and Walls Come Tumbling Down, the next and final track on Internationalists after Shout To The Top, came on.
You don't have to take this crap,
You don't have to sit back and relax.
You can actually try changing it.
Hearing those words, a light bulb went off in his head. Paul Weller was right - he in fact didn't have to take this crap, he didn't have to play the victim, he didn't have to passively accept this role. He could change things, and simply just by looking at it differently. Everything is perception, he realized, and he got himself into this situation by perceiving things one way and when confronted with contradictory evidence - when his fantasy collided with reality - he considering it a catastrophe.
The realization went something like this: he was the one who had left the first girlfriend behind in Boston, just like the second girlfriend had left him for Denver, but he still perceived himself as the victim when the first girlfriend wouldn't leave her own life behind and move down after him. Later, he perceived himself as the victim again when the second girlfriend left for Denver, even though she was just living her own life and acting exactly as he had when he had first moved to Atlanta and, just like the first girlfriend, when he didn't leave his own life behind to follow her out west. And then he went and projected all of his confused feelings of abandonment and betrayal onto the third girlfriend in New York, who had no idea she was carrying all of his baggage, and when she went back to her old (in both senses of the word) boyfriend, she was just acting naturally, being who she actually was, but not who he wanted her to be (or something like that).
Anyway, all of this came to him in an instantaneous flash of intuitive insight, not all drawn out in words like above. Simultaneously, he also realized that if he just looked at this whole situation differently, then poof!, all the pain and suffering went away, and there was no reason to examine up close and personal just how far a drop it was from the bridge down to the water below.
"Fuck this," he thought and got back in his car and drove the rest of the way home. As you can imagine, he listened to the Internationalists album a lot that year after the incident, and took the lyrics as life-affirming exhortations. Paul Weller, he realized, had just saved his life.
The realization went something like this: he was the one who had left the first girlfriend behind in Boston, just like the second girlfriend had left him for Denver, but he still perceived himself as the victim when the first girlfriend wouldn't leave her own life behind and move down after him. Later, he perceived himself as the victim again when the second girlfriend left for Denver, even though she was just living her own life and acting exactly as he had when he had first moved to Atlanta and, just like the first girlfriend, when he didn't leave his own life behind to follow her out west. And then he went and projected all of his confused feelings of abandonment and betrayal onto the third girlfriend in New York, who had no idea she was carrying all of his baggage, and when she went back to her old (in both senses of the word) boyfriend, she was just acting naturally, being who she actually was, but not who he wanted her to be (or something like that).
Anyway, all of this came to him in an instantaneous flash of intuitive insight, not all drawn out in words like above. Simultaneously, he also realized that if he just looked at this whole situation differently, then poof!, all the pain and suffering went away, and there was no reason to examine up close and personal just how far a drop it was from the bridge down to the water below.
"Fuck this," he thought and got back in his car and drove the rest of the way home. As you can imagine, he listened to the Internationalists album a lot that year after the incident, and took the lyrics as life-affirming exhortations. Paul Weller, he realized, had just saved his life.
Are you gonna try and make this work
Or spend your days down in the dirt?
You see things CAN change
And walls can come tumbling down!
Weller, he knew, had absolutely no intention of saving his life or any idea what his lyrics would later trigger in that particular listener when he wrote that particular song. In fact, listening to the lyrics of the album as a whole, it's apparent that Weller had hoped, if anything, to trigger a sort of Marxist response to Thatcherism and to class struggle. But if Weller hadn't written those particular words and hadn't performed that particular song in a way that appealed to that particular listener, who knows what could have happened?
This is the first time he's talked to anybody about that night. Not to family, not to friends, not to clergy (why?), or any one else. He's not blogged about it over at the other site. Let's keep it just between us - our own little dark, emotional secret.
To be sure, despite the revelation on the bridge, he still hurt and the melancholy of the 1980s continued (healing takes time), but he clearly had turned a corner on that dark and rainy night.
This is the first time he's talked to anybody about that night. Not to family, not to friends, not to clergy (why?), or any one else. He's not blogged about it over at the other site. Let's keep it just between us - our own little dark, emotional secret.
To be sure, despite the revelation on the bridge, he still hurt and the melancholy of the 1980s continued (healing takes time), but he clearly had turned a corner on that dark and rainy night.
