While I am not a walking music encyclopedia like my friends David Kelley or Mike Kelly or Gary Beatrice or my ex-wife Brenda, music has still been remarkably important to me. So, if you would ask me a question such as "what is your all-time favorite song?" (and guys tend to ask questions like that) it should be a really tough question. There are so many songs over the years that have meant so much to me. That said, it's actually a very easy answer: Neil Young's Helpless. Of course, the obvious question is, why? Well, it is a hauntingly beautiful song with an elegaic poignancy that still makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck decades after I first heard it. And the line "dream, comfort, memory, despair" forms a perfect lifecycle, and I always thought if I ever wrote an autobiography or a more personal novel those would be four sections of the work. Beyond that, however, I think I immediately fell in love with the song because it was the first one that I remember thinking was so clearly an adult song; that is, it dealt with more profound issues, and just made me feel different than the other songs on the radio.
And now the strange connection. In my mind I always link Young's Helpless with Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio, and specifically the chapter entitled "Adventures." Part of the connection relates to the fact that I discovered both of them at about the same age, but they are also linked because they marked the beginning of a more introspective period in my life (which I guess I never left, and which I hope I never do). Like listening to Helpless for the first time, when I picked up Winesburg, Ohio I came face to face with a more mature art form that demanded that I think about life and which had no interest in providing simple answers. I've always considered Winesburg, Ohio to be the greatest American novel (although I'm probably alone in that belief) because it is both a great novel by an American writer, but also because it sheds light on the American experience.
I'm including the last few paragraphs from the "Adventure" chapter. Every chapter in the book deals with a different person in the town, and it adds up to give you a sense of the town, and, as Sanford would remind us, America. In this chapter Alice Hindman, who had loved Ned Currie and waited patiently for him to return to Winesburg, has an "adventure" that really moved me the first time I read it - and it ends with one of my all-time favorite last lines.
"During the early fall of her twenty-seventh year a passionate restlessness took possession of Alice. She could not bear to be in the company of the drug clerk, and when, in the evening, he came to walk with her she sent him away. Her mind became intensely active and when, weary from the long hours of standing behind the counter in the store, she went home and crawled into bed, she could not sleep. With staring eyes she looked into the darkness. Her imagination, like a child awakened from long sleep, played about the room. Deep within her there was something that would not be cheated by phantasies and that demanded some definite answer from life.
Alice took a pillow into her arms and held it tightly against her breasts. Getting out of bed, she arranged a blanket so that in the darkness it looked like a form lying between the sheets and, kneeling beside the bed, she caressed it, whispering words over and over, like a refrain. “Why doesn’t something happen? Why am I left here alone?” she muttered. Although she sometimes thought of Ned Currie, she no longer depended on him. Her desire had grown vague. She did not want Ned Currie or any other man. She wanted to be loved, to have something answer the call that was growing louder and louder within her.
And then one night when it rained Alice had an adventure. It frightened and confused her. She had come home from the store at nine and found the house empty. Bush Milton had gone off to town and her mother to the house of a neighbor. Alice went upstairs to her room and undressed in the darkness. For a moment she stood by the window hearing the rain beat against the glass and then a strange desire took possession of her. Without stopping to think of what she intended to do, she ran downstairs through the dark house and out into the rain. As she stood on the little grass plot before the house and felt the cold rain on her body a mad desire to run naked through the streets took possession of her.
She thought that the rain would have some creative and wonderful effect on her body. Not for years had she felt so full of youth and courage. She wanted to leap and run, to cry out, to find some other lonely human and embrace him. On the brick sidewalk before the house a man stumbled homeward. Alice started to run. A wild, desperate mood took possession of her. “What do I care who it is. He is alone, and I will go to him,” she thought; and then without stopping to consider the possible result of her madness, called softly. “Wait!” she cried. “Don’t go away. Whoever you are, you must wait.”
The man on the sidewalk stopped and stood listening. He was an old man and somewhat deaf. Putting his hand to his mouth, he shouted. “What? What say?” he called.
Alice dropped to the ground and lay trembling. She was so frightened at the thought of what she had done that when the man had gone on his way she did not dare get to her feet, but crawled on hands and knees through the grass to the house. When she got to her own room she bolted the door and drew her dressing table across the doorway. Her body shook as with a chill and her hands trembled so that she had difficulty getting into her nightdress. When she got into bed she buried her face in the pillow and wept brokenheartedly. “What is the matter with me? I will do something dreadful if I am not careful,” she thought, and turning her face to the wall, began trying to force herself to face bravely the fact that many people must live and die alone, even in Winesburg."
And, yes, sadly, many of us do live and die alone, even in Winesburg. I just remember being deeply moved by that line, much as with the "memory, despair" passage from Helpless, and how it made me want to read more and think more deeply about more important issues. I've included a link to his lovely live version from the 1971 Live in Massey Hall collection that he released a couple years ago. As much as I loved his other early releases such as the one with Crazy Horse at the Filmore East (and few things are better than Danny Whitten era Crazy Horse) I think I love that live album even more because it's an amazing history document. He's out on the road writing the songs (and the songs are so new that in this live version the words are actually different than they would be on Harvest) that would make him a mega-star, and also begin his love/hate relationship with fame. So, give it a lesson, and pick up a copy of Winesburg, Ohio.
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