Nights That Won’t Happen — Purple Mountains

#365Songs: May 24th

And then the world ended. Just like that. A phone call, a numbing, the reshaping of self around an unthinkable truth. We paint death as being about the departed when instead it’s about those left behind, the lucky — or unlucky — ones forced to reckon with whatever comes next.

That’s the thing about dystopian stories, isn’t it? The impossible task of carrying on, figuring it out, finding purpose after the ground has gone missing. But dystopian stories aren’t just about nuclear holocausts, asteroids, zombie apocalypses, and pandemics. Sometimes a dystopian story is what happens in our heads when faced with unshakable grief. That’s how I felt for years after losing my Mom, and what I’m reminded of every time I see a friend or stranger posting about their own loss: that endless process of reshaping oneself around a new truth—the knowing how much suffering must happen before moving on is possible.

The dead know what they’re doing when they leave this world behind
When the here and the hereafter momentarily align
See the need to speed into the lead suddenly declined
The dead know what they’re doing when they leave this world behind

The brilliant and unrivaled David Berman died on August 7th, 2019 at age 52. He left the world on his own accord a month after he released the only Purple Mountains album. Over the course of six albums, Berman’s The Silver Jews released some of the most poetic, wry, thought-provoking music ever recorded. Slate music critic Carl Wilson called Berman, “arguably one of the greatest songwriters of his generation, if you could scare up enough people who’d heard of him to have the argument.”

The Purple Mountains self-titled album is a suicide note, a long painful and beautiful goodbye, a voice from the past that whispers in your ear, “I was once here and I am here no more.”

And as much as we might like to seize the reel and hit rewind
Or quicken our pursuit of what we’re guaranteed to find
When the dying’s finally done and the suffering subsides
All the suffering gets done by the ones we leave behind
All the suffering gets done by the ones we leave behind
Nights that won’t happen
Time we won’t spend
Time we won’t spend
With each other again
With each other again
I often think about

My parents still had an answering machine when she died with her voice that said in her soft, kind way, “Hi, we can’t come to the phone right now, but leave a message and we’ll call you back when we can.” My dad didn’t change it for months, so sometimes I’d call just to hear her again. I memorized the words, the lilts in her voice, the love for whoever breathed on the other end of the line. Even all these years later, this is how her ghost speaks to me, how the sound of her stays alive within me. I don’t know if my Dad still has that old machine, but it doesn’t matter as long as I keep saying those words in her voice aloud forever.

Ghosts are just old houses dreaming people in the night
Have no doubt about it, hon, the dead will do alright
Go contemplate the evidence and I guarantee you’ll find
The dead know what they’re doing when they leave this world behind
Nights that won’t happen
Time we won’t spend

Grief begets grief. It aggregates over time. Grandparents, pets, friends, a parent, and then that knowledge of what it means to suffer and grieve applies itself to less personal losses: basic human rights, innocent victims to war, those lost to or escaping climate disasters. To understand loss, on any level, is to expect its presence everywhere: a fallen bird, a tire-marked squirrel, a washed up starfish, a wilted flower. And yet to grieve is to appreciate the importance of what’s still alive.

I used to chant to myself on long painful runs the Buddhist phrase, “Pain is inevitable; suffering is optional.” I no longer chant that, nor do I believe it. Suffering is not optional, it’s a part of our lives, and we either maneuver around it, through it, or it eventually devours us.

David Berman was devoured by his suffering, but left behind a catalog of wise words that help us move on, to feel a little less alone. His poetry is a reminder just how much beauty lives on after loss. As New Yorker writer Sarah Larson wrote, “Berman’s music seemed to alchemize pain; by the time it reached us, it had become beauty, wisdom, even humor.”

I’m left with a few of his wisest words, echoing through my own perpetual existential crisis: “It would be a tragedy to spend your whole life desperately wanting to be something that you already were all along.”

That’s the thing about the end of the world: it’s often only the beginning of something new, or the rediscovery of something you forget to appreciate. To live on is to never forget who and what was left behind.

This world is like a roadside inn and we’re the guests inside
And death is a black camel that kneels down so we can ride
When the dying’s finally done and the suffering subsides
All the suffering gets done by the ones we leave behind
All the suffering gets done by the ones we leave behind
On nights that won’t happen
Time we won’t spend
Time we won’t spend
With each other again
Nights that won’t happen
Never reaching the end
Nights that won’t happen
We can’t even begin
We can’t even begin

~

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