I bought many FooFighters albums, the last one was in 2007, seven years before I began working for Pandora, a place that made albums a distant memory as it generated made-for-you playlists from your favourite songs. Through my latest streaming app, I got introduced to a song off an album I own. Hilarious right. A song that turned out to be Taylor Hawkings' favourite from that album. That song is also now my favourite, and I had always thought The Pretender was. I can't believe I missed this song the first time around, but what is most surprising is to discover it 15 years later.
The song is Come Alive.
There is a unique power to it that drags you from the moment into a dreamlike overview of your existence. I've only flown twice in my dreams but this song gives me that feeling where I am above myself looking across my life from my childhood, to now and into the future of old age and ending.
It is not for the fainthearted and if you are one that prefers to stay in the happy delusion of the everyday, it's a song to downright avoid. It is powerful stuff and it hurts. But for it's beauty I can't resist it. It draws me in, like a portal to an all-seeing dimension. Of course the one thing we all don't want to see or face is our own ending, our own inability to one day not see the sky or those we love ever again. It is unfathomable and more than distressing...but it is this life.
It is said that Dave Grohl wrote this about the birth of his daughter, which makes sense. But as I saw the pure frenetic and wild spirit of Taylor Hawkins stilled forever last year, I can't help but feel that it would be now a cry for it not to be from Dave himself, who lost his best friend in that moment. It certainly reminds me of how I feel when I think of my friend Kim who died and I know I still think of why and how it could have happened that she was lost at such a young age. It makes me want to be God and make those I love come alive again. The repetition and the build only make the desperation for life over death to be true... please!
If only. Instead my only comfort is we continue in bizarro way in our children, parts of us turning up surprisingly in a mannerism or a turn of phrase, us but not really - like a riff stolen and placed in a new arrangement. A whole new unique human remixed from two others.
We are lucky we have Taylor's words, voice and music recorded for all to enjoy and for him to endure for us, but for him and for Kim I am sad that they can't hear our voices anymore, see our faces or wrap us in their arms. Come Alive Come Alive Come Alive!
