The first time I ever heard The Smiths has to be in the pivotal and also wildly damaging Pretty in Pink. Duckie flicks cards into a hat as “Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want This Time” plays melancholically–as though it could play any other way–in the background. I didn’t know it at the time, but it was the start of my love affair with a brooding pompadoured fella named Morrissey.
Before I go too much farther, yes. I know his politics are troubling. Yes. I know he has said and done some things that range from the questionable to the reprehensible. I’m not here to defend the man, I’m here to adore his music. I fully subscribe to the belief that art can be appreciated while recognizing the failings of the artist. Welcome to the land of Cognitive Dissonance. I’m Shannon, and I’ll be your tour guide.
At any rate, The Smiths played a large role in my formative years. I picked up a copy–on tape–of Meat is Murder from a bargain bin at Musicland in the Salina mall. Ah, the bargain bin. How I miss rooting through your remainders tapes and discovering, among others, Inspiral Carpets and Erasure. How I loved the anticipation of pressing play, hopeful and anxious about what musical assault or wonderland would follow.
I had The Smiths in my car console, a 1980 Chevy Citation I shared with my brother, and later in my own vehicles. I still have it in a bag of tapes I saved including my very precious and not at all angsty “Depression Mix” from 1992. I also had the soundtrack to Pretty in Pink and a Sharp boombox, the pink one with the strap that I named “Big Pink”. My roommate, a dance team member and sorority girl from Colorado, had a killer stereo, but when a blizzard hit Lawrence my freshman year and I felt homesick and lonely, it was Big Pink and “Please Please Please” that got me through the night. I watched the snow fall in the dark, our dorm window framed by Christmas light, and rewound the song over and over for nearly two hours. I didn’t know it yet, but that was my first battle with depression.
Later, when I saw a therapist after my divorce, she called my tendencies to go blue beyond measure “situational depression”. Loosely translated, this is an adjustment disorder that is short term and usually follows a traumatic event or series of events. Yep, folks. That’s me. And Morrissey, unbeknownst to him of course, has been my soundtrack.
College at KU was overwhelming. The school was too big, every one seemed far cooler than me, and I had no idea what I was doing there. I lost an academic scholarship in the first semester by earning a staggering 1.99 GPA. The girl who’d gotten As and Bs without really trying in high school was officially a mess. Come armageddon come.
At that time I was friends with other college students who were a bit aimless as well. We were smart and funny and completely terrified. We listened to The Smiths and Morrissey on top volume in our dorm rooms far more often than we attended class, and all of us eventually managed to be productive members of society, though our paths were neither straight nor narrow.
When I met Michael, his love of Morrissey dwarfed mine. He owns every iteration of release–singles, full albums, bootlegs–knows more about The Smiths and the frontman himself than anyone I know, and his pompadour has echoes of a certain fella with Irish blood and English heart. If there is such a thing as fate, our love story is proof.
This morning, while shopping for groceries at our local Walton-family establishment, a Blondie song I love came one as I wandered the aisles looking for my hyaluronic acid serum that yes, at 45, I can’t live without. Then, back in the dairy section, my hands on a carton of eggs, “Every Day is Like Sunday” began, and I saw aging for the sardonic and wry bitch that she is. I am happy to be 45. I have no interest in being younger and total joy at the prospect of laughing with my friends and listening to music and learning what we are all like in our 70s and 80s. I feel perpetually 22, so there’s little to fear in terms of feeling “old’. But Morrissey, my situational depression soulmate and soundtrack to so many points in my life, playing over the loud speaker as the Ottawa folk shopped for bargains…well…it did a number on me, friends.
The photo above is from a concert I attended with M and our dear friends Jon and Bill in May of 2014. It had been rescheduled from a year earlier, and we were all wildly excited to be there. We stood in line early and got close enough to the stage that we could see the man sweat. When he came onstage, I heard an ear piercingly high scream that seemed never to stop. It took nearly a full minute for me to realize the sound was coming from me.
For as long as I can remember, there have been pockets of sad stitched into my life. Sometimes it’s a day or two, others it’s a semester that bleeds into years of feeling lost. I’ve learned to cope by distracting myself–nose buried in a book, my commute filled with podcasts about disappearances and cults–but it was music that saved me first, before I even knew I needed saving. And it’s always been Stephen Patrick Morrissey buckled in beside me, along for the ride at every turn.
Shannon Carriger 