There’s a guy in my block, he lives for rock

He plays records day and night

And when he feels down, he puts some rock’n’roll on

And it makes him feel alright

And when the world is closing in

He turns his stereo way up high

(from Rock N Roll Fantasy – Ray Davies)

 

When I was a kid I was certain beyond any doubt in my little kid mind that these lyrics were written about, and sung explicitly for my father, a man who would close himself off in a tiny room down the hall from my bedroom and crank up his stereo, blasting rock out of giant thumping speakers till my mother could no longer hear herself think much less raise her voice above the din to yell and complain about the myriad problems in our household. Problems that my father, entrenched as he was in a perpetual adolescence, refused to acknowledge or take any responsibility for.

 

And that constant warm thrumming rock’n’roll that shook the walls and crowded out the arguments over misspent money and over my father’s adamant refusal to finally let go of his carefree youth and embrace the responsibilities that come with a wife and family, that crashing kerrang of beautiful noise always felt like blissful release to me while lying there on my bed, comic books and action figures strewn every which way…oh that wonderful rock’n’roll! As long as the songs raged and reeled everything was bearable and my anxiety, all the worries that haunted me and that I carry with me even now, all of it was shattered by the drums and guitars. Rock made the world right and really good rock made life worth living.

 

From my perspective as a shy, introspective kid who generally preferred his own company to that of friends and family the idea of losing oneself in rock’n’roll was completely seductive. Rock was reassurance. Everything would be okay as long as the music played so never ever turn off the music!

 

The lyrics to Rock N Roll Fantasy seemed to be the secret blueprint to how my father lived his life, and therefore the way of life that I aspired to emulate as it was the singular model of adult male behavior in my household. Even though at a very young age I recognized the foolhardiness and selfishness of my father’s behavior and the choices he made, the attractive pull of the man was irresistible to me. Never underestimate a father’s influence upon his son.

 

You’re a misfit

Afraid of yourself so you run away and hide

You’ve been a misfit all your life

You wander around this town

Like you’ve lost your way

(from Misfits – Ray Davies)

 

However much I may have wished to emulate my father in his beer-drenched fantasia it was the lyrics to Misfits that better captured my own actual, inescapable reality. This song expressed how I felt and how I lived my life. I was indeed very afraid that I would become my father even as I struggled to emulate him. As I have mentioned I had no other model for what male adulthood looked like. Being a grown up man meant having a giant record collection, it meant watching baseball, it meant stumbling into your house at 3 in the morning drunk as fuck slurringly singing Kinks songs and scaring the hell out of your kid and so enraging your wife that she screamed and cried and walked out to stay with her mother till the whole scene calmed down only to repeat itself again the following weekend.

 

So I isolated myself. I built up walls so strong and high they would repel time and again the girls who found it somewhere in their hearts to grace me with their love. Comically, I believed I was protecting them by keeping them at a distance because I was certain I would hurt them, let them down, and I’d seen plenty of that already watching my parents. No thank you. I wasn’t going to repeat that mess.

 

More often than not I did indeed wander around this town so entirely lost that even familiar streets became foreign and hostile. I was sure I had to get out of here, escape, get as far away as I could and then and only then would I be able to breathe clearly and love completely. Without the shadow of this city, pitch-black and shaped like my parents’ lives, hanging over me I would be free. And I’d finally be me.

 

Yeah, that’s some lousy logic. But that’s how it goes. Emotion and anxiety short-circuit all logic and sense and then irony kicks in because what happens is that you work your ass off and think you’re escaping just the sort of life you fear the most when in actuality you are building that exact life bit by tragic bit with each choice you make. Run far enough from the place you least want to be, the world shaped as it is can only return you to the very place you’re running from.

 

So what’s the point of all this gobbledygook? I don’t know that there is a point. There’s only the music and the life inextricably intertwined. There are choices made and records played and maybe they have nothing to do with one another. But maybe they do. I’ve been listening to these two songs for the better part of my life and they unleash great ripping tidal waves of memories and emotions. I’m still trying to figure out what it all means and I guess that never ends for any of us. I no longer mistake my city for the fears and hurts that were born inside its boundaries. My father has disappeared and I try my best to take care of my mother though I worry that too often I fail her. I lost the one woman I loved so much that all the fear of repeating my parents’ mistakes in marriage came crashing down on us and destroyed everything there was between us. I did eventually get past those particular fears, but of course it was too late.

 

There’s comfort in the hard lessons we learn, not much of course but still a little comfort comes from the knowledge that you’ve grown a bit. And there’s comfort to be found in these songs, mysteries too. All great music, really, has this effect. We return to a song like it was the house we grew up in. It never looks the same as the first time we saw it, but it never ceases to fascinate. It never stops telling us this is who we are.

 

Sometimes I fall asleep remembering my father as a young man, his hair down to his shoulders, a fresh beard on his face, an acoustic guitar strapped around his neck, a beer in his hand and the stereo cranked up. My mother hated the music, but I had always loved it. Sometimes my father would set me on his lap and give me a few sips from his beer, there were record sleeves on the table in front of us and the stereo lights would blink their strange semaphore. Some nights, good nights, it’s like we’re still there.

Daniel Crawford is a writer living in Pittsburgh.