Thinking of the men, remembering The Man……..
Posted By Annette on November 19, 2009
Lately, I’ve been watching a lot of videos and listening to a lot of music made by the entertainer I regard as the best in the world. Of course, he’s named Meat Loaf, which sort of detracts from the exalted plane on which I’ve placed him, but I must agree that Meat Loaf is a whole lot more interesting than Michael Lee Aday, or even Marvin Lee Aday (his original name).
(Actually, I shouldn’t find the name “Meat Loaf” that odd since I had once been engaged to a man who was affectionately (I think) known as “Beef.” I’ve always been a sucker for a man with some heft on him. Those skinny little sylph boys never appealed to me)
I think that he, along with that other genius, Jim Steinman, created a whole new genre of music, a kind of operatic, dramatic, dynamic rock, that not only required musical talent, but also dramatic talent. Yes, Bruce Springsteen puts on an amazing show, and so does Bob Dylan, but neither of them can touch what Meat Loaf does. I don’t even know what to call it, but I know that when I watch and listen to him, either in a movie or an interview, on tour, on recorded music, in videos, I am completely swept away by this strangely and powerfully charismatic, talented, witty, courageous, perceptive, sad, frightened, and shy individual.
He touches me. He moves me. I have never seen anything like Meat Loaf ever in my life, and I’ve been buying his music for maybe thirty, thirty-five years, but I listened with slight attention to the great lyrics, the brilliant imagery, the relentless passion and demands, the non-negotiable invitation to the hormonal madness that characterized us as youths, the insanity we should never have even tried to control.
I listened, but I only recently heard the lyrics of the best (Steinman/Warren) lyrics. I finally heard, and I realized I’d made it – the one thing Jim Dickinson believed to be the only way to live a life: that is, I had finally quit growing up and had begun growing down.
(Jim would get this, all of it, but Jim is gone now, too. He never let me down, never disappointed me, never made a sound when I left.
I never stopped loving him, nor he me, and he was he the one, perhaps the only one, who understood that leaving was, for me, the most natural thing in the world. Still, his loyalty to me never wavered, his love never ended, and I kiss his memory every day. Jim was all rock’n'roll – he entertained dreams of setting fire to Fleetwood Mac and the Eagles and cheering while they burned down to ashes, and then stomping on the ashes.)
Meat Loaf is a force of nature, like a walloping storm that busts right through everything and lays waste to whatever it hits, but, when it’s over, you realize that everything is clearer and makes more sense than it did before the storm hit.
Because you realize that you’re not alone.
That he knows a lot about what you did, how it was for you, where you failed, where you tried too hard or not enough, where you just had fucking rotten luck, where you were your best, and where you worked harder than you ever thought you could just to stay alive, how you struggled to forget, and died a bit when you remembered. He’s a great actor, and he sings these songs as if all these things have happened to him; he’s human – of course they happened to him.
I saw this video a few days ago, and was immediately haunted by memories of men who could so easily sing this song to me. Some are alive, some are dead, but I left all of them hating me, I think, and they were right: I was young and self-involved, I had wider vistas, I was too unformed to know how to look back.
But the ones who are gone, ah, those good men.
I remember them all so clearly, and I regret so deeply how I hurt them. I know one forgave me, and he made sure I knew that before he died. The others, I don’t know; I was sure that one gladly would have killed me with his bare hands if he’d ever been able to find me. When I read his obituary, I breathed a sigh of relief, because, yes, I am still that self-involved.
And yet, I am sorry. I wish I could explain to them all that I didn’t understand, that I was far too young for them, that even today consequences matter so little to me.
But, to them all, alive and dead, I say that I am sorry. I hope they forgot me. That would have been the kindest cut of all – for them to have forgotten all of it, the same way I did.
The same way, that is, I almost did, until I heard this song:
Then I saw another, and it reminded me of the man whose birthday was just five days ago, a man who fell so madly in love with the young woman with the dark hair and dark eyes.
How we had it so good and how happy we were, and how he made some wrong, bad, hurtful choices that tore us apart, and I was too young to understand, forgiveness was impossible for me, shattered as I was, and he didn’t say he was sorry until years after we had parted. It was too late by then, but it was pretty of him to apologize, to take responsibility for all that he had done, I suppose.
It meant nothing, just like he means nothing now, but I remember him without anger, without passion, without longing, without any feeling at all, this man for whom I once would have died, and it is all so sad.
Of course, things always happen in threes, or so the Chinese believe, and so did Meat Loaf, with the publication of his last part of the “Bat Out Of Hell” trilogy, and, wouldn’t you know that he included a song that, at first, made me laugh, but all of Meat Loaf’s songs make me laugh. At first.
On “Bat Out Of Hell III – The Monster Is Loose,” there it was, done by Meat Loaf with every bit of passion he still has left in him. His performance here, labored as it is, is stunning, because he is doing just what he is singing about – he is willing to die for love.
I listened and watched this, and couldn’t turn away, couldn’t turn down the volume, couldn’t believe how lucky we had been, just for a while. I had no idea that a while would have to last forever.
I had always been so good, I thought, at not looking back.
I was wrong.
I was foolishly wrong.
There is no present without a past, not if you’ve lived any kind of life of value, and I have. I watched and listened and deliberately looked back.
Meat Loaf’s voice isn’t quite what it used to be, but then, he’s about my age, and lots of things about me aren’t quite what they used to be, either. I’m older now than you were the day you died, older by twelve years, and you have been gone for twenty-eight years.
Twenty-eight years.
A lifetime.
Someone else’s, not mine.
You missed so much while I was missing you.
I’m glad I looked back, and I’m glad I let myself remember.
Even with the tears, even knowing the terrible ending and the forever pain, I wouldn’t have missed you for the world.
Still, I’d give anything – everything – to be able to dance with you one more time.
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crepe bows round the white necks of the public doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
Comments