Twenty years ago, when I was 16, an event happened that would change my life forever. But it wasn’t one of those things that seem to happen overnight. In fact, as I look back at it now, I still feel like I’m going through that change. Perhaps I’m at the tail end of it. Often-times, it’s hard to tell.
Back then, I was discovering the guitar. I was playing drums in a pop-metal band and although I was enjoying the experience of finally playing with a real group, and taking in new influences like The Smashing Pumpkins, I was musically and artistically restless. I wasn’t getting the input into the songs that I wanted (which, in many ways, is the unfortunate part of being a drummer) and the music was starting to get a little repetitive. I was already feeling like I wanted to break away from this project, so I had picked up a guitar and started trying to figure out how it worked. I would plug this little practice electric into my karaoke machine, turn up the echo and the volume (to get distortion) and play along with some of my favorite music, including U2. But I didn’t know anything about tuning or how to make a song or any of that stuff – I was just playing along, trying to see what I could do with it.
My main focus of what I was doing was that I wanted to take some of the poems I’d written over the past six months and see if I could use those as a starting point for lyrics that could fit in with whatever music I managed to conjure up. The poems focused mainly on trying to woo Johanna, the girl that I was smitten by. We’d already dated roughly ten months (from June of 1995 to Spring of 1996), had broken up, and now she was dating someone else. She’d seen some of the poems already – I’d managed to sneak them into her locker now and then. Her boyfriend (who actually went to a different school) had already sent someone to warn me against continuing the futile practice so, naturally, I decided what I really needed to do was up my game (as any hopeless romantic would).
There was something about Johanna that I couldn’t quite figure out. Particularly, why I was so crazy about her. Maybe it was because she was out of my league. Maybe it was because she was so smart. Maybe it was because I could see how strong a person she was (I had no idea how right I’d be). Maybe she was just the sort of person that made me want to be better than who I was, or who I thought I was. I am aware, even now, that part of why we broke up in the first place was that I felt myself to be far too inferior to her – like I couldn’t keep up or wasn’t good enough. Mind you, that was nothing she said or did – that was all me. I’m not going to try and pretend she was perfect – but for a teenage girl she was pretty rock solid. She had a pretty darn good head on her shoulders and I daresay sometimes my fear was that I probably wasn’t a good fit for her.
Johanna’s father was the pastor at one of the local churches. At the time, I was pretty much opposed by the idea of church. I had a respect for religion and I think I was even curious about it myself (who am I kidding? Of course that was part of my attraction to her), but for the most part I found church to be a boring and useless enterprise. But I would be remiss if I didn’t say that I could see the positive influence he and her family’s faith had had on her. No doubt this was a large part of what made Johanna who she was.
It was also part of what, in my mind, made her unattainable. I didn’t deserve her, because in many ways I supposed my opposition of the church made me undeserving of the Lord.
I hadn’t turned anything that deep into words yet. Not in poems and not in song. I really didn’t know how.
On November 4th, 1996 I came into school just like I did any other day. It was a Monday, so I was quite likely very moody and in my own world, with pieces of songs and ideas in my head distracting me from what was right in front of me.
In the case of this particular morning, it was a mutual friend of mine and Johanna’s. Our friend looked rather forlorn, as if something terrible had happened.
“Did you hear Johanna’s dog died?” is what I thought I heard our friend say.
But something about that seemed off. I asked our friend to repeat.
“Johanna’s Dad died yesterday.”
It took a few moments for it to register, but when it did, I felt crushed. Not for me but for Johanna. I knew immediately that this was going to change everything. I didn’t know how, but I just knew it would. Would it change her? If so, how? Would it make her less the Johanna that I knew and a completely different kind of Johanna altogether?
Worse (and yes, this is the kind of thing a 16 year old hopeless romantic thinks), what if she didn’t come to me for comfort? What if she went to her boyfriend? I desperately wanted to be there for her, but because we not only weren’t together but she was dating somebody else, I absolutely could not take up that role.
That was a very difficult part of the process for me. It wasn’t just that I knew she was going to be hurt immeasurably. It was that I – the person who cared about her more than anyone else (according to me) – couldn’t be there to help. I was the last person on the list who could be. Yes, the picture of Johanna in someone else’s arms was not fun, but it was worse to think that while everyone else could be there for her, the rules of this circumstance pretty much stated that I couldn’t be around at all.
And so, I wasn’t. I think I did manage to say I was sorry, but that was pretty much it. Other than that, I kept my distance. I had to watch her go through all of this from afar. It killed me.
The whole experience was rough on our group of friends too. It was like our whole world had been turned upside down. We were all rocked pretty hard in our own ways. Johanna’s younger brother was actually a friend of my own brother’s. She had an older brother in the grade above me, too. Her father’s sudden death had a major effect on all of us, with reverberations felt all throughout the school.
As I watched from a distance, however, Johanna seemed to stay so strong. I know it was a difficult process for her, but she maintained who she was all through it. No matter how sad or how mad she got, her faith kept her moving forward. It was an illuminating thing to see, particularly because, at her age, she could have let it consume her and turn her into something terrible. Instead, without saying a word, she let the experience turn her into an example.
Which made it easy, almost a year later, to put it all into song.
The impetus of this, apart from all the above, was in the late summer of 1997. I can’t remember if she was still dating her boyfriend at the time – I don’t think she was. I had been convinced by our music director to finally join marching band this year, on the quints, and because Johanna was a long-time member of the band, our paths had to cross at one time or another. I feel we were all hanging out one day, either before or after practice (and I’m not even sure if it was at school or somewhere else) and the subject of her father’s death came up. I don’t remember how. What I do remember was that she essentially took me to task for not going to the funeral and not being there for her when everything had happened last fall.
“You were dating someone else. I couldn’t be there for you. I was the last person that you’d want to see,” I had said.
She looked me straight in the eyes and responded, “You were the first person I wanted to see.”
Those words simultaneously made me lighter than air and completely shattered my heart.
No matter how much sense it may have made at the time, maybe even no matter how right I may have technically been, I had failed her.
And, I suppose, I have never actually gotten over that.
It was with this particular episode in mind that I sat on my bed on the night of November 2, 1997. Knowing that Johanna was going to have a difficult day tomorrow on the anniversary of her father’s death, I had purchased a stuffed polar bear that I was going to put in her locker, because she loved polar bears. But I didn’t think that was enough. I wanted to do something more.
I had been tinkering with this song for a while, but didn’t have any words, and barely any melody. It was mainly just a couple chord progressions – clear verse and chorus – with some additional accompanying guitars. But as I sat there strumming it out that night, all the things that had been so hard to put into words, that had been so difficult to watch and experience from afar, came together in a pretty clear stream of consciousness.
It took me an hour to write them down. And accompanied with her polar bear in Johanna’s locker the next day, (with the approval of her younger brother), was this set of lyrics, titled “ElevenThree”:
Cold November
As I see you fall
Upon your knees
A pale night
As I’m calling God
I beg him please
He might have heard me
But you’ll never hear me
Say
Goodbye
Lullabye
God, you took my hero
Please don’t cry
Lullabye
Now I can’t tell my hero
Goodbye
I am lost
But your spirit overpowers me
I am stronger
Than the bitter winds
That fell on thee
I know you still love me
Though you look on from above me
Hey
Goodbye
Lullabye
God, you took my hero
Please don’t cry
Lullabye
Now I can’t tell my hero
Goodbye
La da da
La da da
La da da
I know you still love me
Though you look on from above me
Hey
Goodbye
Lullabye
God, you took my hero
Paradise
On earth we rise
One day I’ll see my hero
Again
I had wanted to write something that I felt could be as powerful as U2’s “One”. I felt this was it. I’ve recorded many, many versions of it, from the one that appeared on my first 4-track demos Lemon Tea and The Ender of Something Beautiful to the latest one I did in 2005 that has yet to see any kind of public release. I’ve done an electronic version of it, and I’m finishing up an acoustic one. It’s the song I always pictured to be my show-closer, the uplifting message to send people home.
It was also the first time, once my heart started to turn toward God, that I actually could see it happening. It was alarming, but refreshing. Terrifying, but comforting. It’s when I knew something was happening, I just didn’t know what. I could finally see why I was into bands like U2, writers like C.S. Lewis and a girl that happened to be a very faithful daughter of a local pastor.
Here’s the remixed, remastered version of the song that appeared on Neon Apocalypse in 2001:
As for how things went with Johanna…
“Too little, too late,” was the response I received when she picked up her polar bear and song lyrics. I’m not going to lie, that stung.
But, as it turns out, we did date again very briefly (and I do mean very) in the summer of 1998, right after I’d graduated high school. We kind of will-they-won’t-they’d for a little bit after that while I dated some other people. For a long time I’d send her a message or a text or something along those lines annually on November 3 just to essentially let her know that I hadn’t forgotten, and I was there. I remember right around 2005 Johanna and I chatted on the phone a couple times about our experiences in high school, from kind of an adult perspective. It was really, really refreshing. In those chats we talked a lot about faith – her continued faith and my growing faith – and the kind of people that has made us and would turn us into.
They were the kinds of conversations I wish I could have had with her back in 1996, 1997 and 1998.
I suppose, however, that had we had those conversations, I wouldn’t have this song. It’s something I’ll have for the rest of my life, and something I’ll carry with me on my journey to the unknown.
And I’ll always be thankful for that.
Have you had a similar experience or know someone who has? How did it effect you? Please share in the comments below!