It was early fall in 1992, and I was sitting at my apartment in Starkville, and--for reasons I forget--I was depressed. I needed someone, something to cheer me up, so I decided to drive about one-hundred miles south to Meridian to visit a friend who was always good for a laugh or for a pick-me-up, for if she was in one of her depressed conditions, listening to her would make me feel better about my life, 'cause--hey--at least my life's not hers. I grabbed my keys and walked outside, and the wind was blowing strong, and it was raining, but I'd driven in storms before, right? What's another one? Even if it was Hurricane Andrew?
Right before I left my apartment, I called the radio station, requesting Jackson Browne's "Running on Empty." The DJ told me that he didn't like Jackson Browne, that he was sure I could ask my grandparents for a copy of the eight track. Sigh. I pleaded my case, and he said he'd play it if I promised to cry to my mother instead of the radio station the next time I felt jilted by life. I hung up. Damn radio-station DJs. I left my apartment, jumped in my car, and started driving, and five minutes later, he played it. Damn radio-station DJs. The song lifted my spirits, giving me enough will to make the long, late-night drive in inclement weather.
Inclement weather? Huh. Now, the first two-thirds of the trip south on 45 wasn't so bad, but about fifteen miles (or so) from Meridian, visibility began to decrease near zero, even with the wipers on full-blast. The rain and water started to blow across the highway in sheets and waves, and then I began to hydroplane. I couldn't control my little Sunbird, and it slipped off into a deep ditch off the shoulder. And it got stuck immediately.
I opened the door, looked at the tires, and I realized that moving the car was impossible, so I had two options: stay in the car, or walk to that convenience store I passed a couple/three miles back to use the pay phone. I was too close to my destination to give up, so walked up the ditch to the highway, stood in the middle (there was no other traffic, and there hadn't been any my whole trip...go figure), and screamed and screamed and screamed. And I felt better. I then walked down the middle of the highway, back to that convenience store, with the rain whipping me from my right, making it very difficult to walk quickly (and impossible to run).Finally, exhausted, I arrived at the store, and--of course--the pay phone wasn't covered...but it worked. I called my friend. No answer. I called again: no answer. I knew I couldn't just stay there at the store, and I didn't think I could walk those miles back to my car, not right then, not in the rain. I couldn't call my parents, either. One, they were too far away, and two, I couldn't tell them of my situation. They wouldn't understand my decision. They'd think it was stupid and irresponsible. Funny, that.
Anyway, I decided to call my cousin Terry (who lived in Meridian). He wasn't the happiest camper when I woke him (for it was after midnight), but he did say he'd come get me. Fifteen minutes later, he was there, and--bless him--he didn't even make me take off my drenched clothing before getting in his sparkling-clean Corvette. As we drove toward town, we passed my car, and I asked him if we could call a tow truck when we got to his house. He just laughed, telling me that no one with half a brain would get out in weather like this, not even for hundreds of dollars. He told me just to wait till morning, that nobody was going to steal my car between now and then. Yeah, I told him, I knew that, but what about my stereo?
Stereo? See, I had my stereo and speakers and tapes in my trunk. The night before, I'd packed them before I left home to drive up to Starkville, and I had yet to unpack them. I asked Terry
if we could at least stop and at least let me retrieve them, and he just laughed again, saying that they'd be alright in the trunk till morning.
Well, morning rolled around, and I called a tow truck, and Terry drove me out to my car to meet the tow truck. He parked the car on the shoulder opposite where I'd wrecked the night before, and I stepped out of his car and walked across the highway. As soon as I reached the opposite shoulder, my heart sunk. The car's interior was full of water, up to within an inch of its ceiling. Utterly dismayed, I just hung my head. If Terry wouldn't have been there, I believe I would have cried. I walked down the embankment to peer inside. I opened the door and jumped out of the way, and grimy water just whooshed out.
For the second time in five minutes, I came close to crying, and I then recalled a time a few years previous, when I'd had to help pull an acquaintance out of a lake who went running in there after his car had rolled into it. I remembered that when we finally convinced him not to go back in after his vehicle, that he just plopped down on the bank and cried. I remembered my friends and I later laughing about him weeping, and then I started feeling worse because I'd made fun of someone in a time of personal crisis. I understood, now, how he'd felt. I'd just entered the fourth stage of grief. For a car. And a stereo.
Those two items seem to be silly things over which to grieve (okay, maybe not the car), but material possessions do matter. It's not all internal, is it, the important aspects of life? I mean, objects aren't as important as, say, love is, are they? In a way, they are. Maslow believed so. After the basic physiological needs (air, water, food, etc...), then next comes safety, and that includes safety of property. Really, it does, even moreso than love (though, conversely, not moreso than sex). Of course, it almost goes without saying that property here means shelter, but whynot a vehicle, an essential means of transportation, an essential means--for many--of being able to keep a job that provides the means of sustenance, the primary need. So, I'm sure that you'll give me the car. But the stereo? Even Abraham Maslow would laugh at that. Right?
I don't think so. A stereo provides music, which--for many (though not most) of the post-Baby Boom generation--gives some of us ne'r-do-wells if not a reason for living, then an aural shelter from the emotional storms of our lives. Popular (and that qualification is important here) music is often viewed solely as entertainment, as escapism. Well, popular music is those things, sure, but it is not solely those things, no. Popular music isn't merely escapism; often, popular music is an escape. It's an escape from the vagaries of life, from the heartaches, from the tiny tortures that some of us can't endure as well as others. It can instill confidence (however briefly), and it can provide self-esteem. It can soothe, and it can heal, and it can inspire. What it can't do, though, is breathe underwater.
Which leads us to "Dashboard," by the indie-cum-mainstream band Modest Mouse, whose sound has evolved over the past ten years from poorly-produced Pavement sound-alikes to one of the funkiest rock bands around. In this song, nasal and manic band leader (and singer/songwriter/guitarist) Isaac Brock hews close to his one of his main lyrical themes: traveling. Here, Brock uses the lack of the ability to travel as a metaphor for the power of positive thinking. Okay, so Brock isn't Norman Vincent Peale; in fact, he's more like Alfred E. Newman. "At least it wasn't quite as/Bad as," he sings, for it could always be worse. Let's look on the bright side: "Oh, the dashboard melted/But we still have the radio" and "The windshield was broken/But we have the fresh air, you know." You know...if Brock had sung that to me the night I had my wreck, I'd have punched him.
Okay, I wouldn't have punched him, but I'd have thought about it. The twit--he just better be glad he's got The Smith's former guitarist Johnny Marr laying down down those funky chicken-scratch fills, and the Dirty Dozen Brass Band punching up and punctuating the verses, and those Philly-Soul strings sweeping the instrumental breaks breezily along the way, and his own mushmouth, slobbery, Sylvester-the-Cat vocals, fluctuating up and down the scale, completely attuned to the beat, creating rhythms all on his own. 'Cause if he didn't have all that behind that stupid message of his, then this song--dashboard, radio, stereo, tapes, and all--would just sink into the abyss of the hurricane water-filled ditch off Highway 45, and not even Jeremiah Green--Modest Mouse's drummer, one of the best pop-rock drummers of this generation, always attuned to the groove, no moreso than on this song--could tow this one from the depths.
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