"Keep Me In Your Heart" by Warren Zevon

Singalong 005: Grief teaches us who we are

“Shadows are falling and I'm running out of breath / Keep me in your heart for awhile / If I leave you it doesn't mean I love you any less / Keep me in your heart for awhile”

I glossed over Warren Zevon's music growing up. Passed it by. I saw the man's tapes in the library stacks, where I'd always check out the maximum number of items, and I never got curious about what the man might sound like. His name sounded funny, even for my town. I missed this train.

It might have had something to do with my teenage obsession with jazz. See my Jealous Guy post for more about that.

There's a theme here I guess: a lot of the songs I'm doing now are by writers who I just didn't think about when I was growing up, for reasons of distraction, misdevelopment or blindness. But eat your vegetables, Trev. I was too young to appreciate them at the time. Now, after some growing and some healing, I'm finding out that they're part of my DNA.

And they go down good. Having slowed down a bit, I'm now able to consider the immense debt of gratitude I owe to these songs, for teaching me how to be.

"Keep Me In Your Heart" especially.

“When you get up in the morning and you see that crazy sun / Keep me in your heart for awhile / There's a train leaving nightly called when all is said and done / Keep me in your heart for awhile”

There's a quiet courage to this one, Zevon giving voice to a distinctive male helplessness. Totally taboo. Not merely an end-of-life acceptance (who can count the deathbed scenes in shows and movies where this song helps the cast bid farewell to a beloved “father” character?) but a tender admission of love in its overarching "I've given all I can-ness" and "My time draws near-ness".

Poignance: a man singing from the vulnerability of his love, giving his all and quietly beckoning the listener to look beyond the limits of his health, to see into the heart's immense capacity to feel.

I stayed waaaay away from songs like this growing up. They were too simple and I was too ardent. I was conditioned to crave complexity and stay restless. I needed melodies that explored, chord changes that modulated, music that pushed the limits of my attention. I needed arrangements that insisted on drive and uniqueness. I had allergies to songs that simply *were* themselves. Songs that said one thing and didn't go anywhere else? They gave me a rash. My journey was beginning, I needed music that took me places.

But “Keep Me In Your Heart” merely arrives, and then goes away. Like a human life.

“Sha-la-la-la-la-la-la-li-li-lo / Keep me in your heart for awhile”

I am now at the age when everybody’s parents are dying all at once. God it’s rough. I just spent a few months in a tiff with my mother, and during that time three of my friends lost their mothers. They each felt a different way about it, depending on the way things got left in the end. Some people are granted relief, others have to grasp at excruciating loose ends.

A woman I met at a party told me she was at peace with her mother’s death, but that her sister had been in a bitter fight with their mom which never got resolved. She is having trouble living with the loss, the aftermath. This person told me that all of the extraneous bullshit fades completely away with the loss of a parent, that you are only left with the longing for one more exchange, one last fragment. A glance, a hug, any of the tics that used to be so irritating… anything really.

My mother is still kicking, and I don’t have room for any more regrets. So we’re talking again.

Grief teaches us who we are, we don’t have to rush it.

“Sometimes when you're doing simple things around the house / Maybe you'll think of me and smile / You know I'm tied to you like the buttons on your blouse / Keep me in your heart for awhile”

In my 20s I became very alienated and had trouble navigating most social situations. Pride and paralysis kept me from seeking therapy, I wouldn’t listen to anyone who suggested that I might benefit from it. I got a job as an in-home caregiver and played in my cover band on weekends and that was about it.

I took on very contentious airs in most collaborative situations. I managed to get myself fired from several bands and relationships. Folks were frustrated by what they saw as wasted potential, in retrospect I was exhibiting some extremely narcissistic behavior. Any person or situation that showed up to check my ego became a target for either my wrath or my evasion.

In the 90s I somehow managed to survive like that. I was my own wrecking ball. It’s hard to believe, and embarrassing to look back.

I’m not a psychologist, sociologist or a doctor but I have come to view narcissism, racism and cholesterol in the same way: we all have it, we just need to manage the level of it in our system. It’s better to have less, so we learn to make choices that keep our level from spiking. Because at the end of the day, we have nothing but each other and other people’s memories of us. Of how they experienced us.

“Hold me in your thoughts, take me to your dreams / Touch me as I fall into view / When the winter comes keep the fires lit / And I will be right next to you”

A good friend of mine came over to the house for Thanksgiving last year with his 89-year-old dad, who passed away a week later. We got to spend a lovely evening by the fire telling stories. That night is how I’ll remember him.

My two grandfathers, who never met each other and who I never saw enough of, keep me company in all of my creative work. They’re looking over my shoulder right now. I’m just trying to get enough done on this plane so that the three of us can have a good laugh on the next.

I have ancestors and predecessors buried under grapevines, behind barns and in other forgotten places. Some of them gracefully dismounted at the end of a long and loving life, others died of a sudden heart attack, from cancer, or were brought down under the weight of a collapsing skyscraper on 9/11. A couple of friends’ fathers committed suicide by shotgun on their own property, leaving their families to pick up the pieces.

We are the pieces.

As Murakami and others have pointed out, death is not the opposite of life but an integral part of it. We, the living, keep our relationships going long after the physical passing of our loved ones from this earth. When they leave a scar, we wear it.

“These wheels keep turning but they're running out of steam / Keep me in your heart for awhile”

Once I came around to seeing myself as a continuance, a representative of those who came before me, I started getting over my petty problems and stopped wanting to create more of them. Restlessness, pain, fear and ambition became guides. I had less and less time for resentment. I had to start prioritizing connection with other people, curiosity about our differences, respect for what I don’t understand.

All we can do is get on the good foot and try to stay there.

It’s all the same story. Keep singing.