No. 205 – Heathaze

Performer: Genesis

Songwriter: Tony Banks

Original Release: Duke

Year: 1980

Definitive Version: None.

Yesterday was a fun story to recount and write up. Today’s isn’t; it’s like rubbernecking a train wreck. Feel free to skip it, but it’s essential in this musical autobiography.

In my opinion, this song is the most anguishing post-breakup rock song ever written, and unlike with Me and Sarah Jane—Mr. Banks’ other rumination on the end of things—I’m not going to go online to find out that he really was writing about having a bad dinner. If he was, I don’t want to know.

Heathaze is in the top 10 in terms of songs that I feel as though they were written expressly for my benefit. “The trees and I are shaken by that same wind, but whereas the trees will lose their withered leaves, I just can’t seem to let them loose.” “Beware the fisherman who’s casting out his line into a dried-up riverbed, but don’t try to tell him, ‘cause he won’t believe you.” Man, I know EXACTLY what that feels like. I lived it.

Sometime in 1989—I forget the exact time of year, although I think it was in the spring—I was told news that I’m sure Jin wouldn’t want to pass along if she had it to do all over again. In retrospect, I wouldn’t want to know it.

At some point during a conversation over the phone, Jin let slip that she had heard recently from someone from her past, someone with whom I once shared an intense passion (even during a Torch Lake rainstorm). Yes, out of nowhere, Jin had heard from Melanie.

The two left Albion after the 1987-88 school year to seek better fortunes elsewhere. By now, Melanie was ensconced at Michigan State, and Jin worked in Columbus while planning her next move.

Meanwhile, I was stumbling through life like a drunk in the dark—crashing into a lot of furniture. But Jin’s news was a flashlight. I asked—practically begged—her for Melanie’s contact information.

It should be as clear to you as it is to me now why this was an extraordinarily bad idea. It also should be equally clear why it seemed like a good idea at the time: Maybe, just maybe, we could rekindle the fire that burned so hot the previous summer. Desperate men take desperate action.

Somewhat reluctantly, Jin passed along Melanie’s address and phone number. This couldn’t have been easy for Jin. Her friendship with Melanie was collateral damage in the fallout of our breakup. I begged Melanie to stay friends with Jin, but that wasn’t a realistic request, all things considered. Now, Jin had a chance to rebuild that bridge with a person who had been a very good friend to her, but I was going to mess it all up.

Looking back, I bet Jin knew at the time that handing over Melanie’s contact information meant that she would lose her friendship forever and never hear from her again, but she took pity on me and told me what I wanted to know. Had the positions been reversed, I’d like to think I would have done the same, but, in all candor, I don’t really know if I would have. But Jin is more headstrong than I am. After something was over, Jin would let it go and let sleeping dogs lie, so the positions never would’ve been reversed in the first place.

Then came bad idea No. 2: Before calling Melanie, I sent her a card out of the blue where I quoted lyrics from Romeo and Juliet by Dire Straits. Why I thought this was a good idea at the time I’ll never know. Now, it’s obviously terrible—as in Jon Favreau in Swingers drunk-dialing his ex over and over uncomfortably comedically terrible. Maybe I thought by doing so I would show Melanie my misery without her in my life and win her back thusly. I don’t know.

Believe it or not, whatever plan I had in mind didn’t work out the way I hoped. With the road to reconciliation paved with doody, it should come as no surprise that when I called Melanie, it was a train wreck. Our conversation was painfully short. It wasn’t angry or even tense, but when it ended, there was no doubt that the fire not only had been put out, it had been doused with a bucket of water and covered by stones.

When I robotically hung up the phone, I had to get out, out of that apartment NOW. I ran out, jumped in my car and just started to drive through the northwest suburbs of Chicago. I wasn’t driving crazily, like I might kill someone—myself included—but without purpose or sense of direction.

For my listening displeasure, naturally, I chose my tape of Duke. Duchess laid me low; Man of the Times and Misunderstanding pushed me down further. Heathaze … was devastating. I had been sniffling all along, but as PC reached the chorus of this song, I dissolved in a pool of tears.

This was while driving. I didn’t want to hurt anyone—myself included—so I pulled over on a residential side street somewhere in Des Plaines, sat in my car and poured out everything I had inside me in a final, complete heartbreak.

Eventually, I stopped. I made no conscious decision to stop; I just ran out of the energy to cry.

Outside my car, life continued apace. But inside, the trees began to change colors and the river waters began to recede. I drove home.