Football—Youth Lagoon

#365Songs: May 4th

I’ve always been obsessed with shadow lives, the person we would’ve been had a single detail gone a different way. For a few years, I fell asleep every night to the film, Sliding Doors, which follows pre-Goop-era Gwyneth Paltrow through two lives: one if she made the train, the other if she didn’t. Or, years before that, in Mr. Destiny, the way Jim Belushi’s character wanders into a bar that only appears for him, at certain moments, in which bartender Michael Caine alters a key detail of his life — a Little League Baseball championship in which Belushi’s character swings, misses, and loses the big game for his team. Even in Back to the Future, how altering a moment at a dance shifts power, wealth, and generational demographics.

Applied to my own life, I’ve thought about who I’d be had I never left Cleveland. It’s almost impossible, now, for me to even contemplate such a thing because it feels so otherworldly, so not me, and even staying likely would’ve ended with me going at some future date. Not that I can fully know who I’d be had I stayed, I do know who I never was, how I never felt a sense of belonging. I had very few commonalities with those I grew up with and around. As with many boys who come from such places, sports were the only unifier, the thing we could do together, our small talk safe space to help us avoid coming to terms with the fact that I’m not like you.

I’ve been listening to Trevor Powers’ Youth Lagoon for a decade and a half. His early sound was minimal, hypnotic, ambient, and of course — as you’ve come to expect with me — atmospherically melancholic. There’s an introspective intellectualism to his music, and on each album he seems to be contemplating some larger existential or spiritual conflict: on The Year of Hibernation, it’s severe anxiety and fear of death; on Wondrous Bughouse, it’s spiritual and natural decay, while still anxiously fearing death; on Savage Hills Ballroom, it’s unrest and heartbreak, the restless fear of yearning for childhood innocence while treading through adulthood — while still fearing death.

And this was all before he was 26.
At 27, he “retired” the Youth Lagoon name.
As with many anxious types, Trevor’s biggest fear came true: a severe allergic reaction to an over-the-counter medication left him tortured, without voice, in physical and spiritual pain for a few years. But like a true artist, he unretired and released his best album yet, last year’s beautiful Heaven is a Junkyard, on which he explores near death and the beauty of rebirth.

“The reason any of us get into music or any passion that we are eager to throw ourselves into is because of that inner child that never went away. It’s the play and the fun. It’s easy to get caught up in the bullshit and lose sight of what the beauty actually is — it’s always right there, but it’s easy to miss if you’re not paying attention,” Powers said.

But there was one song left off that album, Football, which Youth Lagoon dropped earlier this year. It looms larger, in a way, because it sits alone as an isolated statement. Like with most of his songs, I resonated not just with the feeling but also the content, the characters, the experience within the world he’s created.

“‘Football’ is really a celebration of failure. Society has a terrible habit of only recognizing achievement while glossing over the greatness in the shadows. We’re so distracted trying to earn love, worth and value that we forget it’s something we inherently already have. I wanted to play with this idea through the lens of sports ‘cuz, in a lot of ways, sports are the truest religion. When I was young, it was the only way I knew how to connect with my dad. We didn’t have a lot in common, but we could both throw the ball. There were rules and rituals we could see eye-to-eye on. We didn’t have to argue over who was right or wrong. The difference in my family was, it didn’t matter how good I was. The act of just throwing a ball was communion. It didn’t matter if I caught it. I love my Dad for that.”

This is how I connect to my Dad, too, who otherwise has always struggled to understand me — even though he tries, in his own ways. Throwing or hitting a ball together was our religion, the one place where we were the same, where our differences didn’t matter. It’s the father and son relationship at its most innocent, its most unapologetically cliche. Now, talking sports is the only way we connect at all.

Upon first listen, this is how I resonated. But going deeper into the song sent me into a much richer, more Sliding Doors-y territory. This song is less about what it means to catch the football and more what happens when you drop it. Who do you become?

Donnie dug a hole
His face as wearin’ thin like an old shoe sole
Momma turned to dust
She was on the train tracks waitin’ for the blood to rush
And you told me I was stayin’ strong
When all I’ve done is play along
And they put it on, they put it on me
Don’t put it on me
Maybe you’re not the person who caught the football
Maybe you’re not the person who caught the football

Youth Lagoon has always been headphone music. Not just to experience the nuances of the sound, but to send yourself into your own inspective spiral, to create the space to soundtrack your own crises.

To fail, over and over, is to expect failure. That’s Cleveland, a city where losing in dramatic fashion is what it’s known best for through the decades. A city that lost its industry, its way, even its fucking football team for a while. To lose, so often, trains you to get over-excited when you’re about to win, but always with the voice in your head whispering, “Nope, something will go wrong, you’re not good enough, you’re not the type of person who gets to win.” That’s the voice that haunts a city, a team, a person for whom failure comes easy. It’s a form of generational trauma, growing up in a place like that, in a family like that, where the ceiling isn’t any higher even as it passes through generations. I’m still haunted.

So to stay is to inherit this mindset, to embrace it, to accept a false prophecy on a daily basis where failure and apathy surrounds you. Or least that would’ve been true for me, I’m sure. That’s not to say there aren’t folks I grew up with — and around — who aren’t thriving. Of course there are. But those boys who caught the metamorphic football, but who never left home to discover something bigger than themselves, aren’t necessarily better off than those of us who dropped it, but found a different route to explore.

Mary on the pole
Her faith was wearin’ thin like an old shoe sole
Mary holdin’ tough
She would fuck the preacher if he only paid enough
And his ring is off and his button down
And he tore it off and she tore around
Put a bullet in and pull it on three
Don’t pull it on me
Maybe you’re not the person who caught the football
Maybe you’re not the person who caught the football
Maybe you’re not the person who caught the football
Maybe you’re not the person who caught the football

Perhaps ‘the football’ is more about curiosity, or restlessness, even a mindset that forces us to flee in search of something less predictable. Perhaps sometimes the person who caught the actual football missed the point entirely, that the resulting cheerleading and deification created a false sense of success, a misunderstanding that things will always be so good, that the ball will always fall gently into our hands. It’s a trope, at this point, that those who rise to the top in high school reach their peak too soon. That’s not always true, of course, but in that way I’m glad I wasn’t the one who caught the football.

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