Heading After Light

There are a couple of things that cheer me up in a world gone wrong.

Performing in an improv show cheers me up. I’m doing that tonight. My friend Sarah and I booked a community space in Iowa City. Nothing special. Nothing theatrical. Still, a small group of people will gather in person, put down their phones, and I’ll get to make something that will never happen again with them. That’s a good thing to do.

Another thing that cheers me up? Neil Young.

***

I bought Decade and Freedom when I was thirteen. I imagine I ordered them from Colombia House. Do you remember ordering CD’s from Colombia House? The first 8 were free. The rest cost fifty dollars a piece. What a scam.

Decade is a classic. A selection of Neil’s stuff from the 60’s and 70’s. Freedom is a strange album. I bought it to listen to Rockin’ in the Free World. I was into grunge and Rockin’ in the Free World felt kind of grunge. The rest of the album is a scattershot of genres. Neil had spent the 80’s wrecking his career. And then he came out with Freedom. I would to listen to the album in my basement bedroom. I’d sit in my waterbed, listen to Neil on my headphones, and read books. What a multitasker.

Freedom hit me hard. It was such a vital, weird album. Some of the songs leaned towards metal. Others towards country. The lyrics were so odd. The more I listened, the more fascinated I became. The album connected me to energies that were bigger than myself when I was 13. That was important to me.

I listened to the album on my walk to campus the other day. I’m 44 now. Neil was 44 when he released Freedom in 1989. I couldn’t get over Neil’s vitality as I listened to the album again. I read the wikipedia entry I linked above after finishing the record on Spotify. Neil’s career was pretty much over when he released Freedom. He described Freedom as the first album he wanted to make in years. He didn’t give a damn about genre or marketability. He described one of the songs, Don’t Cry, as a mix of Roy Orbison and trash metal. Hilarious. And then Neil Young did this performance on SNL, returned to the public consciousness, and spent the next forty years making more music.

Watch Neil on SNL. I can’t get over it. He’s 44. He’s already had a career. And there he is on SNL just letting it fucking rip. Forgive my language, but come on. He rages against the machine as powerfully as anybody else rages against the machine. And he’s 44.

There’s a model for me in Neil Young. Let it fucking rip, baby.

***

I stay away from politics in what I put into the world on the internet. I’m as leery of the fascism on the right as I am of the fascism on the left. Still, these last few weeks have been deeply troubling to me. Something is shifting in the United States, and I’m afraid it can’t shift back. It’s something that has been here all along, but that something is frightening all the same. Befriending right-wing dictators, decimating institutions, and stoking xenophobia and racism. All of this, to anybody who has spent any time studying history, should be a little concerning. But I’m afraid the polarization that has entrenched folks in their particular versions of reality means that the shift that is happening will keep happening and, God forbid, lead to violence. Violence is bad.

None of this is new. Neil wrote, way back in 1989, about a warning sign on the road ahead. He was writing about America. Singing about America. Letting it fucking rip about America. Man, Neil.

I don’t have any answers to this present moment, other than a few lyrics from another Neil Young song. Star of Bethlehem is on Decade and I first heard it thirty years ago in my basement bedroom. I listened to it again last week and it has been haunting me ever since. Here are the lyrics:

Ain’t it hard when you wake up in the morning
And you find out that those other days are gone?
All you have is memories of happiness
Lingerin’ on

All your dreams and your lovers won’t protect you
They’re only passing through you in the end
They’ll leave you stripped of all that they can get to
And wait for you to come back again

Yet still a light is shining
From that lamp on down the hall
Maybe the star of Bethlehem
Wasn’t a star at all

Man, Neil. All your dreams and your lovers won’t protect you. Your nightmares and your enemies either. Your politics or your creeds. Your version or reality. They leave you stripped of all they can get to. And yet…

Yet still a light is shining. And maybe it isn’t a star at all. Maybe there is some goodness down the road yet. And maybe I’ll keep heading after it. Doing improv with folks in a small community room is a light in the darkness. So is listening to Neil Young let it fucking rip. Forgive my language.

Neil Young’s music has been helping me figure out how to keep heading after light for a long time. And it still does. Nothing new under the sun, I guess. Maybe the sun isn’t a sun at all. What a strange way to end a song. What a strange way to end a blog. A song and blog that never ends. An existence that never ends. There’s more down the road ahead, despite the dreams and nightmares of this present moment.