Alabama Shakes (Me To My Core)

A hot, moody summer underpinned by a looming sense of foreboding. That is how I remember it.

I don’t know about you, but I would say that a summer spent in an emotional rut is worse than winter. Winter kindly reflects the darkness inside you – summer mocks it. The mornings insist on dawning bright with the chatter of songbirds. You should feel like Mary Poppins but instead you can only think: what is wrong with me?

The summer I have in mind ambushed me like the first episode of a murder mystery. The metaphorical setting: a cheerful Danish beach where families laugh and swim – only, there is something amiss. You can tell because the soundtrack is just a series of screeches and scrapes and the colors aren’t right at all.

What cadaver is about to be revealed? 

This is precisely what I was wondering during the summer of 2013.

I was 23 years old. Back then (and perhaps still now) I preferred to keep my cards close to my chest, so I had been doing a delicate dance of avoiding loved ones as much as I could without raising concerns. I felt itchy in a general, hard-to-express way; my unhappiness and fear seemed to come from everywhere. My mind was embroiled in a murky stuckness that I couldn’t see through. I didn’t want to infect other people with it.

During this foggy period, my friend H. was in town and she wanted to go to Folk Fest in Prince’s Island Park. She knew something of my angst, and suggested that a mixture of friendship, nourishment, vitamin D, and music was not the worst idea. I agreed and gathered myself together. We drove to Crescent Heights, made our way down the creaky wooden stairs to the river valley, and enjoyed the refreshing breeze coming off the Bow River on the bridge to the island.

My memories of that day are mostly congealed impressions of: 

Sweltering direct light, sticky sunscreen, dust, grass, impatient crowds, fried food, loud children, music from various stages set up amongst the baking pines and poplars. Overpriced bottles of water.

You could say that my Victorian-style sensitivities, the ones I had been cultivating for weeks in solitude, were decidedly overwhelmed.

My friend and I had arrived at the festival gates in the mid-afternoon. Hours later, as dusk fell, I felt a familiar exhaustion set in. I was longing for my bed, for solitude, and for the welcoming embrace of darkness. We were making our way to the main stage for the final show, picking our way between blankets and chairs, and I had decided to admit to H. that it was time for me to leave.

I opened my mouth to do just that when a simple acoustic melody struck my soul and froze me in both time and space.

I don’t say this to be bombastic. As the song began, my exhaustion disappeared. My fuzzy, fretful mind was suddenly sharp and present. A cool electricity bloomed in my feverish head and crept its way down to my toes. 

And then a bone-tinglingly, glorious voice started singing.

Bless my heart, bless my soul
Didn't think I'd make it to 22 years old
There must be someone up above
Saying, "Come on, Brittany, you got to get back up"

You got to hold on.

I had never (and haven’t since) had the experience of encountering a song written just for me – in itself an delightful impossibility.

But there I was, hair disheveled, feeling older than my years, standing in a crowd with my mouth slightly agape.

This was a song that had courage, and it lifted my confused slumber. It voiced a truth about the experience of living past a perceived expiry, of dealing with the reality of what comes after. Of wandering and questioning. This song was my song.

By the time the freeing stanza “So, bless my heart and bless yours too, I don't know where I'm gonna go, don't know what I'm gonna do”, filtered into my consciousness, I was smiling and thinking about how mysteriously we move through the universe. I felt an outpouring of gratitude for the disparate elements that led me to this other Brittany, who was bravely singing a song for her and for me at the moment I needed it most.

Was it mere happenstance? Or was it more?

In a nutshell, this is why we’re here in front of this crackling fire while the storm rages on: To consider the forces that move us – or perhaps how we allow them to move us. Or even whether we allow them to move us.

Transformation is what happened to me that evening ten and a half years ago. During Alabama Shakes’ following song, appropriately named “I Ain’t the Same” (captured that very night on this beautiful video) tears ran softly, discreetly, and contentedly down my face.

I wouldn’t have to wait long for my proverbial cadaver to be revealed that summer.

Thankfully, I felt differently about it by the time my fears washed onto my shores. It was still hard, but it wasn’t bad. It turns out that with a change in perspective, you can do the things you’ve spent your life wishing you could do.

Well, I've been going through the motions
Wonder if anyone can see
That I been looking for somethin'
Have you been looking for me?

I ain't the same no more
In fact, I have changed from before
Oh, no, you ain't gonna find me, oh, no
'Cause I'm not who I used to be

-Alabama Shakes

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