Let me begin by saying, I am not a fan of the meme “I was today years old when I found out.” I’m not really a fan of any memes, mostly because it seems like that’s how my two kids get their news. But I digress.
So, I’ll just say it in an old-dude way. Today I discovered something that has absolutely stunned me. But some background, first.
August 1st, 1981 was a Saturday, thank the stars! Because it was not a school night. I was twelve years old and my father allowed me to stay up late to watch the very first televised sputterings of a totally new television channel: MTV. The M stood for “music,” and my father was an audiophile from way back, so I guess he empathized.
I remember sitting in front of my family’s Zenith console television waiting, feeling anticipation tingle through my veins, staring at the SMPTE color bars. Then it hit: video of the space shuttle moments before liftoff, the countdown, then —inexplicably— a shot of the Saturn V launching. Cut to Neil Armstrong stepping on the moon, then, “Ladies and gentlemen… Rock and Roll.” The MTV flag in a miasma of changing colors and designs planted there on the moon accompanied by that MTV guitar rhythmic riff that is forever burned in my brain. Finally, the iconic Buggles’ “Video Killed the Radio Star.” Glorious.
But that is not what this tale is about.
It took four years for me to have an experience like that again. In 1985 I watched A-Ha’s video of “Take On Me.” It was new and creative and awesome. It was a little like the music video version of watching the huge Imperial Star Destroyer crawl across the screen at the beginning of Star Wars.
And my thought was, “Great visuals. But too bad it’s for such a poppy bubblegum tune.” Now, thirty-nine years later I discover that I was devastatingly wrong.
This morning, while trying to wake up because I have work to do, I punched in “80s Fitness Music” onto my phone and it began with A-Ha’s major hit. I was happy, but I also realized that I never really knew the lyrics. So, for the first time in nearly four decades, I decided to check out the lyrics.
Mind.
Blown.
The song is a positive existential screed on how to live one’s life. I’m serious. And still a little stunned.
Sure, it’s about love and it’s a little bit stalky —as many songs disturbingly are: “I’ll be coming for your love, okay?”
But there is a real carpe diem sentiment to the thing.
So needless to say,
I’m odds and ends.
But I’ll be stumblin’ away
Slowly learnin’ that life is okay.
Say after me:
It’s no better to be safe than sorry.
Take on me.
Take me on.
I’ll be gone
In a day or two.
“I’ll be gone in a day or two.”
When I was younger, I was positive that I would be dead by 40. Not in a depressed or ghoulish way. And certainly not in the Club 27 way (Janis Joplin, Kurt Cobain, Amy Winehouse, Jim Morrison, Jimmy Hendrix). I’m so not cool enough for that. It was just a feeling of certainty without any emotion attached to it.
I’ve been pretty surprised now for a little over 15 years.
So the whole live-while-you-can thing has been swirling in my head for a while, not that I act on it.
The phrase, “I’ll be gone in a day or two,” carries a pretty visceral punch for me.
All the things that you say, yeah
Is it life or just to play my worries away?
You’re all the things I’ve got to remember.
You’re shyin’ away.
I’ll be comin’ for you, anyway.
If you can release yourself from the obviously disconcerting, “I’ll be coming for you, anyway,” this is a lovely piece of advice.
For me, though, it is considerably more than that.
For years now, I have had this dream —sleeping-in-bed dream.
I am old. In bed. Clearly dying…happily. My wife holding my hand, softly singing “You Are My Sunshine” to me as I slip away.
She sang that song to my boys at bed time when they were younger, and hearing it always did something fantastical to me.
She will, of course, not do this on my deathbed. Mostly because I am not her children and she is not that sentimental.
But I’m pretty sure that my feeling for her is “You’re all the things I’ve got to remember.”
I know: I’m a dad, my kids should be forefront in my mind, yada yada. But look, I love my kids, yet there is a time that I want them out of my house and to venture forth creating their own lives. My love for my boys is deep and paternal. But my love for my wife is magical.
And the line, “Is it life or just to play my worries away,” is… well, Shakespearean to me. So Macbeth. So Hamlet. And as someone who has worked with anxiety and depression —in the clinical/medical definition, not the I’m-dramatically-sad definition— that is the question: Is it life or just to play my worries away? I’ve spent decades now trying “play” my worries away.
Well done and insightful, you little Norwegian trio. Much respect and my apologies for underestimating your song. Unless it’s really just a hard play to hook up for a one-nighter. But I’m going to choose my own reality for this one.
