This Old Song Showed Me The Span of Time

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The other day I watched two people sing a song on YouTube and I lost my mind. I’m still thinking about it — and the tears still come.

I’m a neurodiversity coach and I have such beautiful clients. They come in all shapes and sizes, which means different personalities and dreams. The other day one of my clients laid down the game plan for himself for the following week. Because he was so adamant and so willing to dive into his intentions, I decided to commit to something myself.

“Well, if you’re going to do that,” I said, “then I’m finally going to watch the Tracy Chapman and Luke Comb performance of “Fast Car” at the Grammy’s you’ve been harassing me weekly to watch.”

“Deal!” he said.

“Deal!” I said back.

That night I watched it, but I had no idea what I was in for. As soon as I pressed “play”, and Tracy started strumming that familiar, beloved tune, the ground under my feet crumbled into an oblivion of time and history. Suddenly I was falling into my past and everything that song meant to me.

I sobbed uncontrollably. I sobbed like desperation was a weedwhacker, cutting my equilibrium at every turn. I’d been trimmed back to my core — no present, no past. I took off my glasses, dried my eyes, put the glasses back on, and sobbed again.

While it’s true, I tend to tear up — for the beautiful as much as the sorrowful — this one caught me off-guard. It was a meta-upon-meta experience for me. It seemed it was for everyone else who loves that song, too. The audience at the Grammy’s went nuts. Articles flooded the internet afterward. I wasn’t alone.

This woman, a legend, having come out of hiding since 2009, was singing with this man, an earnest country singer — the two of them representing demographics at odds with each other of late, singing as one. They were singing a song about hardship and dreaming. They put harmonic sound to a universal experience of wanting what might never be, though half the point of the song is the listener is an observer. We hear the narrator plead to her partner. Our hearts sink. This woman might never rise out of her struggle.

What do you do when you see someone dreaming an unlikely dream?

Music is a fundamental channel of being alive. I’ve never been dead, so maybe it’s the same for those folks. Music is a key mode of understanding life more keenly. Sound is a river that carries story along. It’s a heightened journey.

“Fast Car” is more than enough to well up such tears in me. But what’s so crushing when I hear these old songs played by their now-aged creators, is how the passing of time envelopes them.

Long ago, in a land far away, there was a song called “Fast Car” by a singer named Tracy Chapman about a woman who must give up school to care for her alcoholic father, and then later her lover, but she dreams that a car will carry her away from this reality. As a fan of this song, I felt sad for that woman, but also for me and whatever troubles I’d grappled with at the time — a young person trying to make her way in the world.

Today, my life has moved on from that song. I’ve forgotten about the car and grown far from that reality. I’m not that person anymore. Unlike that woman, I drove that car through to the other side. Time saved. I came to know love, accomplished things, and learned a little. I healed.

Anyone could have recommended I watch that Grammy performance, but I’m glad it was one of my clients. My clients and I work in partnership. I help them drive through ditches toward their dreams. They move on from where they are now to the other side. In their case, the car needn’t be too fast, and the dream is very likely. But it’s a journey as it is for everyone.

Since coaching is a partnership, I get somewhere, too. I gain wisdom from their wisdom, inspiration from their breakthroughs. I see the beauty of human resilience in front of me. I’d be comatose if I didn’t. People are incredible.

If I’ve moved along, and I’ve watched others do it too, why did that Grammy performance affect me so deeply?

It’s because the journey never ends.

These days there are new troubles and a new reality. I’m older. Life is shrinking as we speak. Some Mondays I wake from my sleep, glance out the window, and chastise myself, “Darn it. You forgot to call Mom this weekend.”

The passing of time is stunning to me. It’s why we cry at graduations and weddings. These are joyous occasions, but they’re also markers of all that came before. We’re nostalgic, proud, ambivalent, and shocked to stand in that moment along the continuum.

I was shocked to be standing along the continuum of that song.

You start out as a young adult and grapple with something. Life is big and you’re small by comparison. There’s always something in front of you, even if it’s how large life looms with its complicated questions.

But then life moves on. You hurt but you learn eventually — hopefully. One day it dawns on you that you’re in the driver seat, that life isn’t a large thing, it’s simply you, and that the car doesn’t have to be fast or immediate — just in drive, moving.

I’m still in that car after all these years — which means I’m still alive. Hearing that song after so much time, I got perspective on the car. It was always there. I owned the keys. It’s grown clunky and smart. It’s got its favorite routes, and it knows them by heart. I often stop by the side of the road because sometimes I don’t need to go anywhere, especially since now I see myself as the main destination.

So, I call my Mom. I listen to my client. I write to you. I make a difference somehow. I try. That’s my journey today and I’m glad to be on it. We’ll see where it takes me.

Tracy Chapman & Luke Combs @ The Grammy’s, “Fast Car”

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Have a nice week, friends.