Because David Berman and his band, The Silver Jews, are so awesome and under-appreciated, I’m going to try to spotlight a great song here from time to time. I’m a little out of practice when it comes to close reading, but the poetry in his songs just sort of screams for interpretation. Here we go with our fourth installment!
“Every day it hurts a little less, and then one day you wake up and the pain is gone. But the funny thing is you learn to miss that pain because, like her, it was a part of your life for so long.” – Mike (Jon Favreau) in Swingers (1996)
After watching the Indians collapse yesterday under the weight of, well, a bunch of Boston players that look like 12-year-olds and some dude named “Big Papi” (I swear I’m not making that bit up!), I started thinking about what it means to be a Cleveland sports fan. Or to be a Cleveland person in general. I wasn’t necessarily thinking about a musical connection until this afternoon during a break at work. I was trying to explain to my friend, Sara (a Pittsburgher), what it’s like to root for a losing team for so long that another big loss in another big game doesn’t really hurt as much as you’d expect.
“Inside the Golden Days of Missing You” – from The Natural Bridge (also 1996) – Watch and listen at YouTube, bitches!
Inside the golden days of missing you –
with the people of Cleveland
who’ve suffered for so many years …
The shattered glass cussed
and when it broke it spoke to us
It said “Hey!” It said, “I know you … What’s your name?”
So I don’t make a habit of quoting Favreau; generally, it’s a bad idea. But in this case, it’s not only appropriate — it’s the essential question in this song. I could probably save us all a few minutes and just stop now, but there’s no chance I’ll make it that easy … It just wouldn’t be right. The first question that pops up in this verse has got to be something like “What the hell does Cleveland have to do with missing somebody?!?!?” Well, everything … Cleveland has a long and notorious history of being a hard-luck town. And not just in professional sports … Most everybody who’s going to read this already knows why Cleveland is the perfect reference in this instance and why “suffering” really is not an overstatement. In the latter part of this first verse, it becomes very clear that we’re talking about a break-up — a bad one. Berman’s choice of “shattered glass” is certainly not accidental here. Beautiful metaphor, it is … and when the glass breaks, it expresses familiarity to both parties. We’ve been here before, no?
I wish they didn’t set mirrors behind the bar
’cause I can’t stand to look at my face
when I don’t know where you are.
Then the feeling fades away
but you sort of wish it would of stayed –
inside — the golden days of missing you.
Yeah. Our narrator’s still hung up on this lost love. Remember what I said yesterday? You really don’t want to be drinking and thinking about your exes. It makes for some miserable nights. Trust me. Except that halfway through the verse, the miserableness “fades away,” only to be replaced by a new longing — missing the agony of missing someone. Here is where it hits home for me. I dated a girl for seven years — from 1989 (I was 15) until 1996 (I was 22). Despite the fact that I cheated on her whenever I wanted, when we broke up, I was miserable. At the time, I figured I was cursed: October 1995 – Indians lose the World Series to the Braves in the Tribe’s first post-season foray since 1954. November 1995 – Art Modell announces that he’s taking the Browns to Baltimore. April 1996 – my first real girlfriend tells me that the greatest job I will ever have (bartender) is fucking up her relationship with Jesus. I didn’t know what the fuck was going on. Laugh if you want, but those are the types of life-changing experiences that can make an otherwise rational person think the world is engaged in some great conspiracy against them. Over time, that feeling faded away — just like the song and Favreau say. Then, one day eleven years later, you pick up the newspaper out of habit and see your ex had a kid and think, “Wow. Fuck. Weird.”
What if life is just some hard equation
on a chalkboard in a science class for ghosts?
You can live again,
but you’ll have to die twice in the end –
in the end, oh; we’ll meet again.
The last verse begins with another question, and a pretty oblique one at that. And by oblique, I mean nonsensical. Berman answers his own question by more-or-less dismissing the notion of reliving his past with the more-or-less straightforward answer that it isn’t worth it — knowing that history repeats. The narrator resolves that “in the end” they’ll “meet again.” And that’s enough for him. And it should be enough for us all. To borrow a paraphrase quote from Nuovo Cinema Paradiso (aka: The Greatest Film Ever Made), “Don’t give in to nostalgia.”
And more than anything from Swingers, that’s become my mantra. Leave the past in the past and the ghosts in their graves.
The Natural Bridge reviews at The Corduroy Suit
This post is dedicated to Raison D’Etre.
