Song Stories: Push

When Wil and I started the This Wreckage ‘zine over 30 years ago now, the idea is that we would have people submit material that we would throw in each issue as is and put it out to the world.  What we didn’t realize going in is that most people do not want to actually share things like that.  We struggled in finding material to achieve our albeit ambitious goal of a monthly issue. 

However, in a small way, I’d like to float out a similar request we used to do every issue, but with more of a singular focus.  I am hoping that anyone who reads this would be willing to send some kind of story of a certain song that means something to them.  This could mean a short story, an essay, a drawing, a photograph, a poem, a few words, I don’t know.  One of my favorite things is to tie music to pretty much every waking minute of my life.  It’s a problem really.  There are hundreds of songs that evoke a lot of emotions for me for a variety of reasons based on their being nearby at the time.  I absolutely love hearing and reading other people’s stories along these lines.  I don’t care the genre or the artist, or my personal history, if any, with the song, I find these stories endlessly fascinating.

I’m hoping to encourage any and every one who might be willing to send some of their stories to me via messenger, or via email: tangledrec@hotmail.com.  I would like to share them here, on this site, if given the permission.

Please ask any questions you may have.

Taliatha Anderson has been kind enough to tell a very personal story.  Here it is:

In 8th grade I formed some of the first friendships of my short life. I had been moving around a lot in the Seattle area and had never formed any relationships outside of my family that lasted longer than a couple of months. I was shy, sad, and socially terrified. When I came back to my birthplace of Lincoln City, Oregon and started attending Taft Middle School, I found a sense of belonging for the first time. The misfit crowd absorbed me into their ranks and they became my people. In Mr. Parker’s shop class, I sat with one girl from this crowd who had band names written all over the outside of her binder. The Smiths, Siouxsie and the Banshees, Depeche Mode, Joy Division, New Order and The Cure. I was uninformed and for a minute thought that The Smiths was a romantic notion that the boy she was dating, Shaw Smith and herself hoped Jr. High love would go the distance. “No! It’s a band” she laughed, but happy I took their romance as seriously as she did. I secretly wrote down all the names when she looked away and slowly started to accumulate these artists and more.

Our local record store, Driftwood Mac was a treasure chest for me. The owner Mike became a face I couldn’t wait to see. When I bought The Head on the Door by The Cure from him in 1987 I had unknowingly bought my favorite record for the next year. I was introduced to so many good artists at this time, but I kept coming back to this album time and again, listening to it over and over. Learning every inflection of Robert Smith’s voice and his whiny cries and howls, going over every word like religious text in my journal. It’s probably my favorite Cure album to this day. 10 perfect songs and oh man!! That album art!!!! A blurry x-ray of a face turning into smoke to my mind. I’ve never wanted to find out what the art really is, I’m still under its spell and knowing would take away a fundamental truth of my life. Robert Smith wrote that album for me. That evaporating screaming head with glowing eye sockets and hands covering it’s face in the x-ray is looking in to my own mind, a frenzied light captured in darkness and losing shape.

“Push” comes on 5th. There’s a clean channel distorted guitar riff punctuated by drum fills and it builds until the band all joins in. It becomes poppy, upbeat and danceable. For a couple of minutes, it goes on until dropping off again to build up again after another lonely guitar riff and Robert howls in the distance. Then the lyrics begin. The phrases that gave voice to my rage. “He gets inside to stare at her, the seeping mouth, the mouth that knows the secret you, always you, a smile to hide the fear away, oh smear this man across the walls like strawberries and cream!!”

I haven’t written those words in ages. They still move me and even now I feel my pulse gain speed. As an 8th grader I would find myself alone at home occasionally. If this happened as soon as the coast was clear I sprinted to the stereo. I’d put on “Push” loud and scream till I was hoarse. I’d pick up the needle to restart the song after the short lyrical portion ends the offering abruptly after it levels its accusations and makes its threat and resigns. The second time was always the best listen because I had just sung the lyrics so now the instrumental part was my youthful, uncoordinated dancing painting my living room with my wildly waving arms having just sang the most affecting words I had heard in my life up to that point. Yelling as loud as I could to “smear this man across the walls like strawberries and cream!”

I am not sure this song was written about what it became for me. I’ve never whole heartedly jumped into the side of music that becomes academic or analytical. Maybe there’s a narcissism in me that only wants to know what it means to me. I have always found music gave me a language I could never speak myself and that raw, vital connection has always felt fragile if I loved the music from a part of my mind that was beyond my visceral reaction.

At a young age I had lived a life of chaos and violence and my emotions were held hostage. Years of being told to “wipe that look off your face”, “don’t you dare cry”, “if you make a sound…!”, physically having a hand over my mouth and nose had buried my voice deep down inside of me and The Cure was coaxing it out of me until I reached the pinnacle and would scream with all the voice I could summon as if sheer volume and intensity could smear that man across the wall. “It’s the only way, it’s the only waaaaay to beeeeeeeeeeeeeyaaaaaaaaaaaoooooow!!!”

Cut from 87 to May 2008. 21 years later I was with my daughter Autumn at Sasquatch Music Festival in Quincy, Washington at the Gorge Amphitheater. Death Cab for Cutie played a fairly hurried set because Ben and the guys couldn’t wait to hear “the fucking Cure” as he put it. Even as a fan of Death Cab I couldn’t have agreed more.

I could write a novel about this show and what it meant to me but for the edification of “Push” as it applies to my experience, I will limit my bursting mind. I will say that opening with “Under the Stars” with that background and under actual stars might have been a little on the nose, but it was sublime. My relationship with this song comes full circle when midway through The Cure’s set that guitar riff begins. I was not in control for a time. I was an 8th grader alone in my home, finding my pain an outlet for the first time. I was a frenzied head evaporating into smoke on that x-ray.

I had to pull myself back to that moment I could not miss. I leaned into my daughter, now 5 inches taller than me. She knew my love of this artist and was protecting my view and my experience from the drunken scene around me so I could focus on this moment in time. I can still see Robert’s head completely still while his eyes wander from side to side above his messy lipstick. He was constantly making sideways glances through the edges of his ratty, black, cotton candy hair, as if avoiding eye contact with his crowd. He began to plead into his mic “exactly the same clean room, exactly the same clean bed, but I’ve stayed away to long this time and I’ve got to big to fit this time” and I immediately felt those 21 years.

My life no longer was contained and defined by moments, it had become a fuller experience. I can no longer fit into “Push” so completely. My voice now has a mind of its own to speak for it. But, the beginning needed “Push.” The feeling of growth and calm in the shadow of my beloved 15 year old daughter needed “Push.” I needed “Push.” A menagerie of artists and art forms have continued to assist me in exploring the emotional side of life, but this was my beginning of my relationship with my fractured self. It has been the most difficult journey of my life, but holy shit!!! It has a kick ass mix-tape, and the opener, the hook….

(Cue Push guitar riff).

The Cure "Push"