Sundown paints the shadows through

Labour Day Weekend comes and goes every year with a sense of both piquing excitement and downtrodden despair. Like running down a steep hill at full speed, it’s exciting, it’s fun, but there’s also the idea that soon you’re going to be at the bottom, and you won’t able to slow down, won’t be able to stop, you’ll just keep running and probably get hit with a bright yellow bus.

I imagine it’s slightly akin to what prisoners must feel as they eat their last meal: they give you whatever you want; it’s tasty, it’s delightful, it’s finger-lickin’ good. And for dessert? DEATH. We keep picking and picking at our plates, and all that succulent good slowly disappears until finally we’re staring at the cold face of a clean plate, and the realization we have to get up at 7 a.m. tomorrow.

My labour day was spent typically. I ventured up to my family cabin at the lake, and spent four days with the cool, clear water, enticingly green forests and starry nights — all of which I viewed from a window conveniently placed near the satellite TV and laptop. Just like the Pioneers lived.

We get exactly two radio stations in that neck (more like forearm) of the woods, one of which has an unhealthy obsession with Olivia Newton-John. I understand that Grease is an American classic that captured the youthful spirit of something or other and is remember fondly by a countless number of baby boomer women (Many of them with day-time talk shows), but I also understand that is a really bad movie and everyone involved in the production should be beaten with a rake. So we rule out the Olivia station and go right to what has become a staple of cottage listening: Rock 95.

Every Labour day, Rock 95 does its “Top 500 songs of all time” countdown. I do take issue with the concept — I really don’t think it’s fair to call it an “all time” list when every ballad on the list was recorded within the last fifty years. Looking over the list now, I certainly don’t see any Beethoven, Mozart or tribal chanting (Well, KISS is on there a few times.). But, hell, it’s a neat concept, and nice background music for my exciting Labour day adventures which largely consist of getting up at 1 p.m.

The problem with the countdown is that I have NEVER heard it all the way to the end. It comes to an end Monday evening, and that, of course, is when I’ve already set off down the lost highway towards home. Every year, we start the drive home around the top 50. “Okay,” we think, “We’ll definitely make it to the end now. We have a three hour drive ahead of us.” And so we go, across bridges and down highways, through large towns and small towns that can barely be called ‘towns’ — we drive. And we hear horns honk, and tires screech, and, I’m sure a lot of profanity is uttered under many-a-driver’s breath. But such is the Labour Day drive home. Eventually we’ll get stopped in traffic, as everybody on the god damned highway slows down to take a gander a the drunk frat kids who mistook an 8 foot barrier for the road.

And the top 500 songs are with us. Counting down slowly throughout it all. Paradise by the Dashboard Light, as it were, and was, and Imagine and Pinball Wizard at 43, hell, that had to be a twist. Layla, and Jack and Diane and that Sweet Child of Mine as the road rushes past and farmland is replaced by skyscrapers and serenity by chaos. Dream On, In the Air Tonight, Summer of 69, Brown Eyed Girl — the silent roar of sadness as the sun sinks lower, and the stars come out and with Sweet Home Alabama, the sun is gone.

The top ten starts with dusk. Thick in traffic, urban sprawl, and far too much life, Sweet Emotion, Satisfaction, American Pie. The way the smoke from Toronto buildings obscures the night, and the way the lights from the city blink, in and out, with a rhythm akin to the song. And the road just keeps moving under us, and it all goes far too fast.

You Shook Me All Night Long, Hotel California, Bohemia Rhapsody and then, static. The music fades. Out, and then back in. Giving us a fleeting hope that rests on our shoulder like a beautiful bird, before squaking and flying away in a flash. Words, notes, spirit obscured by static. Getting worse as we got closer and closer to being engulfed in that city up ahead. Money, and Hey Jude, and New Orleans is Sinking — static, in and out, straining our ears to make out just what the hell song is actually playing. Try to hold on. Try to keep things going in that last dark night in the summer.

Nothing can really be heard now. Just the steady sound of absolutely nothing, assaulting the ears. We almost heard everything, and yet, it feels like we heard nothing at all. Just another day. Another week. But that car keeps going, and the signs tell us we’re entering cities. It’s so dark, the lights of the cars in the other lane fly by, the cars themselves invisible but the lights all too bright. The car is just going far too fast, and the radio finally falls silent, and the passengers in the car just sit, and think, and stare out the window at all that darkness, and all that god damned light.

And another summer fades to static.

The number one song? Stairway to Heaven. Perhaps we’ll get there next summer.

Matt
Have a dream I’m falling down / On my face / Scrape my knees / Scrape my hands until they bleed / she’s fast asleep next to me