AMERICAN PIE
5 April 2023, 21:23
“Something Touched Me Deep Inside…”
Now. I know. How old I am.
It’s been forever that I’ve listened to Don McLean’s “American Pie”.
I was … innocent. And I think that was the crux of it. From what I know, and what I FELT it was, it was reflection of when Kennedy was shot, when a generation lost innocence, when an era was changed. What I KNOW of it was it reflected the times beginning when Buddy Holly was killed through to the changes in the 60s.
I’m currently going through existential angst, where this sort of music is PERFECT to catapult you into a universe that paints all sorts of MEANING on whatever you are thinking. The real world puzzles has made me search (if not subconscienously) find some meaning in the plodding, and mundane events of things making my life a little harder than it should. I do not find it unwelcome that I sit on the porch and listen to “American Pie” and find some deep, pop culture mystery swamp to wallow in as I drink my gas station margarita and ponder camelot. A camelot that wasn’t mine. A time that wasn’t mine.
And, thank you google, I kinda got it right. It was a little about the end of an era when Kennedy got assassinated, and mostly when Buddy Holly died in the plane crash. It was probably an amorphous blending of that time where the optimism and hope of a nation and culture died. The whitewash hopefulness of our America and the intrusion of reality (of the war, of inequality, of racism, of division, of TURMOIL) became for the future (us) almost nostalgic. And its because this was the soundtrack of my childhood. There will be many times this happens to touch me on a base level – I “feel” it, in a visceral level, memories and emotions mixed to make it FEEL in me – something I can’t explain. Much like when something triggers a tidal wave that washes you back to being 10 years old.
I’m a very Steve Job-vian person – not dwelling or even remembering the past – its the step ahead that’s important rather than looking back. I try to balance the need to move forward to the angst of looking back. Well. Yeah. I lied there. No. I plod forward. I dwell in the satisfaction that we erase the past, and we are forever defining the future. I know you NEED to have in looking back that helps you step forward but I am of the opinion, “Yeah, okay…. looked back, now. FUCK THE PAST”. Who wants to look back? I certainly don’t want to relive my mistakes – my shames – my wasted potential – my alternative path to a grander existence. It only saddles me with my longings to change it – a longing to ERASE the person that we were before. Something I CAN’T DO. Nor maybe should I. The past made me what I am today. And I fear who I might be more than the desire to be something else. Though its neck and neck sometimes – the idea that you could have been a different and more fantastic soul than you are now. Self loathing is a hell of a thing, but fear is stronger. That’s why we don’t do that looking back. We want to be that better person that lies ahead of us and that past is there to drag you down, give you doubt, tell you that you missed your exit on that highway that would have made you this imagined greater human being living THE LIFE.
So. Being that person that… well. Abhors the past. I don’t even want to touch it. I want to feel decent about the roads I’ve taken, and the person I’ve become. But, I got sideswiped by that feeling because the universe turned my head toward my past. Not even toward anything bad or specific. Just a feeling … of the past. Of something lost. Of opportunities lost. Of a person lost that I could have been. I got a mouthful of warm nostalgia that I shouldn’t have looked deeper into. I found that there was so much lost, so many paths I should have taken, so many things that never came to be. So, thanks universe, and fuck you.
That’s all comes from traveling the path, making the choices which makes me leave behind the past – bad and crippling as well as the warm and comforting. I haven’t learned to separate the two. The more forward motion I make, the more it forces me to think of what paths I COULD have taken and then the more I try NOT to look back. The past could-have-beens sometimes takes me out at the knees. That’s why change is so turbulent for me. The unknown. The alternative the imagined better realities that could have been. I still step forward in immense fear of making the wrong choice, but damn if I don’t rush forward because the fear of NOT doing SOMETHING is more great. The force that MAKES you keep going, to keep that momentum forward going, when you feel such fear that you are making mistake after mistake or you will be punished for reaching too far. The ARROGANCE you have for thinking you could make that step? The fear the universe will, indeed, correct you when you’ve reached TOO far.
I think there’s so much I have accepted as an adult, trying to be accepting that there still is a warm embracing future and I haven’t wasted and trashed so much of a promising life. A lot of the time, I live in a world where I am 40 again, and have a lot of runway to correct my flightpath, my sweet delusion that keeps me from opening a vein. The feeling of being just outside the door, of the path, of the house, of the future that is exactly what I want. But a thing like this song triggers a warm nostalgia and the realization of just how far down the path I am and how much of my story has been written. Confusing state of being for an old woman who feels like she just got it all together and wants a chance to live a life blessed with knowledge and experience only to know there is only a short bit of the flight left.
This song makes me feel young and old at the same time, evoking both flood of feelings. Both are tidal waves washing over me. I know in my head I am aged. I feel in my being I’m transported to being 12 again, and seeing that long stretch of road ahead of me. I’m thinking of paths untaken, paths not even thought of, and I am thrown into a well of sadness. I feel a deep curiosity of what person I would have been, had I made the right decisions, or even… different decisions. As I type that, suddenly, I realize the absurdity of that wish. We ALL want to change things, to venture down those untrodden paths, to correct what we have done mistakenly. And this is why I hate the past. It takes away the power of the future gives me. The hope of having the life and being the person that will be fufilled and worthwhile.
And I as I think of that. I feel like a fool. It’s just the twinge of the past, the longing for what could have been and the lack of appreciation of what IS. I guess it took as long as it took me to type this to realize that what was, ISN’T. Maybe, its what older people do. Taking that long look and dissect the past. And why this one song makes weird thoughts and feeling stir. Took me about a half hour to realize the song is stirring a longing for a reality that is untrue, a myth. A reality that promises things that can never be realized. I don’t understand why this is making me wistful of something that isn’t even in my sphere. I am not that generation, I don’t know the events that happen in the song, I am feeling nostalgic for feelings that never were. That is some first rate. marketing. You have seeded in me, nostalgia I for something that isn’t mine and triggering a sense of failure that I shouldn’t have as I think of the real past. That’s some next level voodoo there.
Took me 5 or 6 paragraphs to kinda circle around to this. I am feeling deep soulful longings for a past I don’t know. And then it morphs into real regrets and real exploration of realities unattainable. I lose my appreciation and my rooted sense of self that THIS reality, THIS life has given me. American Pie is a myth made in my mind. And I’m not even sure if it something that is bad. An invasion and reprogramming of something so particular. And I think I did it to myself. I do remember the song as something pleasant. Something familiar. Something home. Then I adopt the myth and mythos. And then, it…. beCAME.
Going to listen to “American Pie” a bunch more times. It’s a good song. And I need to understand the song evokes a softening, nostalgic whitewashing of what was that give you that longing of why can’t it be. And that whitewashed past is always going to feel better than seeing things as they are. And. Well fuck. It touches something visceral. I get the warm and fuzzies in my chest that I CAN’T control. It’s like having a long since passed pet, snuggle you in the night, in the haziness of half sleep. So I got ONE song done and dealt with. That just leaves a whole catalog of 90s music to analyze to death until any enjoyment and deeper feeling is drain out of that shit.
I don’t have comments enabled, but if you want to continue this conversation or tell me what sort of moron I am, email me at onlyduh@gmail.com. I would actually really know what people think and if I need probably some follow up therapy for all this.
