Belly, "Human Child"
From time to time I get overinvested in a conversation, and I start spinning out opinions. One after another, spitting out of my mouth like semiautomatic gunfire, each new shot more emphatic and provocative than the last. Now I’m self-aware enough, this deep into life, to know when I’m getting wound up, and I have these ready-made tricks and gadgets I can feed into a conversation to keep from getting slapped. Caveats, qualifications, acknowledgments, pretenses to self-reflection: in another life, I might have made a good lawyer.
I try to keep these rants confined to discussions among friends—people I trust enough to hear me out, roll their eyes, and not set me aside as too difficult or too much. I’m finding as I get deeper into life that the best opinions are offered into the open air for few and friendly ears, so that they can more easily be lost to history. Put them in writing, and you might have to answer for them: to your readers, to people six removes from your readers who want nothing other than to judge you. Maybe even to karma and hard cement, if—just pulling an example out of the sky—you post an anti-cyclist screed to Substack and are dumb enough to get on a bike the next day.
[rubs bruised right shoulder]
Back in July I got into a lather while recording an episode of our Mixtape Diaries podcast (Apple Music, Spotify), with my friends Mark and Carla. The subject, on which it turns out I have strong views, was “maturity” in rock music. I won’t go into too much detail here—the episode hasn’t been released yet—but I will outline, and in certain spots elaborate on, the several opinions I inflicted on my co-hosts during that discussion:
I find it irksome work to have to train myself on a beloved band’s latest, unsolicited record in the weeks ahead of seeing them in concert, just because they insist on populating their setlist with cuts from the new album.
Said new album almost always disappoints, because it lacks the magic and energy these musicians had when they were hungry, on the march, and charged with that wild broil of powerful and conflicting feelings—joy, defiance, outrage, love, despair—that is inaccessible to adults.
Rock music was conceived specifically to give the young free rein to tell their stories. In the time since, rock in this mode has proved essential, in that it enables young people to find common cause with, and support from, one another. And lately rock has helped close the generation gap, too, by reminding grownups of what it was like to feel everything so intensely.
Accordingly, when I read the word “maturity” in a record review, I want to kick a hole in the wall. Maturity in these write-ups inevitably means (a) the band members started families and had to revise their understanding of what’s important; (b) the rehab finally took, yielding songs that are grounded and reflective; and/or (c) they were bored to tears with the same old formula, and thank God for the synths and session musicians their producer brought into the studio to “reinvigorate” the sessions.
Maturity is antithetical to and incompatible with rock music. It contravenes everything it has stood for in these past sixty years. And so I arrive, finally, at my thesis [and right here was where I got out over my skis a fair bit]: No one who isn’t between the ages of 17 and 30 should be allowed to compose, perform, or record original rock music.
In the time since I disgorged these sentiments into my podcast mic, I became less inflamed on the subject. You get yourself something to eat, your blood sugar comes back up, you move on with your life. Then last week Carla sent an early edit of the episode for us to test-drive. Soon enough, I had my fist back in the air and was fully and militantly recommitted to everything I’d said back in July.
Then, two days later, I was driving to work, “Human Child” (Apple Music, YouTube) by Belly came on in the car,1 and I was crying like a baby. And I realized that these opinions of mine, which rang so clear and so true to me when I played them back on Sunday night—had been hunted down, shot full of holes, and left for dead by Tanya Donelly.
Belly released Star, their first album of cryptic, discomfiting Americana, in 1993; their second album, King, in 1995; and their third album, Dove, in 2018. “Human Child” is on Dove, meaning it falls neatly into the category of compositions I had proposed to wipe from the face of the Earth. Like so many of the songs Tanya Donelly has written—and sung, in her alternatingly sweet and belting voice—over the years, it’s not entirely clear what exactly is going on in “Human Child.” Try to crack the code of “Slow Dog” (Apple Music, Spotify) or “Red” (Apple Music, Spotify), two of Belly’s very best from the 1990s. Or go back back even further to Tanya’s days in Throwing Muses and see what you can make of “Not Too Soon” (Apple Music, Spotify).
“Human Child” is oblique, evocative, and poignant like these others—that is, every bit as good as Young Tanya songs—except in this case it was written by a woman at least fifty years old, and from the perspective of a parent.
Penalty flag on the field. A mother singing to her child is not rock ‘n’ roll. Or is it? After all, Chrissie Hynde wrote “Kid” (Apple Music, Spotify) when she was 28. “Kid,” “Human Child”—both of these are poems of consolation, and if you don’t think Tanya had the Pretenders in mind when she wrote this song, consider that it includes the words stop your sobbing.
But the difference between “Kid” and “Human Child” is that Chrissie wasn’t a mother when she wrote “Kid.” And Tanya’s actual experience of motherhood pays off in the depth and richness of her lyrics. The child in her song—her child?—needs to know that although there’s little we can control in this life, we can position ourselves to maximize the joy or despair we draw from it. This is a matter of mindset, we don’t come to the right answer naturally, and Tanya’s young addressee could use some help with their orientation:
Oh, human child—your face to the wind, your back to the sun.
It’s a fact that our children will, at some point in time, choose the longer, harder road. They will turn away from the light, into the teeth of cold resistance, and they’ll start marching. I’ve seen this with both my kids. False starts, defeats, disillusionment are fundamental to growing up. Sure enough, dwelling on the pain of these reversals is the very essence of the rock music I’ve loved for forty years and written about here for forty weeks. But when the pain is inflicted on human children you swear you were holding asleep against your chest mere minutes—not years—ago? Well, that can be hard, very hard, to watch. These teenagers of mine: I love that they feel things so deeply, but at times I wish they didn’t, or couldn’t. I look on proudly as they begin to steer their own course through life, and still it takes every ounce of my self-restraint not to grab hold of the wheel.
I’m not here to save you, the chorus begins. I’m just trying to get you outside. Okay, so this part isn’t just resonant to me as a parent; it’s instructive. We’re not here to save our children. That’s a pipe dream. But getting them outside, under the sunshine, so they can see and appreciate what is good in this world? This is achievable and important, and arguably the best we can do for them. Get yoursel[ves] out of your way, kids, and pull your head[s] out of the shade.
A bird takes off into above—we follow with our eye but never grab hold, never own it. That’s as it should be, as it was and ever will be. So let’s stop moaning, stop your sobbing.
More life wisdom for the child here, for sure, but could it be ever-so-subtly directed as us parents, too, on the very subject of our children? Or am I especially vulnerable to suggestion here, seeing as how I’ve called my older child Bird for most of his life, and at odd moments since he began his senior year last month I have found myself struggling to catch my breath?
Up come the defenses again. This, I say, is exactly why rock music requires narrow definition and the strict enforcement of boundaries. Tearful acceptance and the bittersweet embrace of change are not rock ‘n’ roll. If anything, rock is properly directed at the inverse proposition—i.e., unreasonably demanding changes that will never happen. On that score I’ll take the babe-in-the-woods futurist manifesto of La Dusseldorf’s Viva record all day long,2 whereas you, Mr. Bowie, can keep Blackstar to yourself, because I flatly reject the suggestion that you have died. Who exactly do you think you are, Tanya Donelly, diverting guitar and drums, bass and vox to this nefarious purpose? Winding your way through my fortifications and hitting me squarely between the eyes with hard truths and the wisdom of experience—how dare you?
We hold life tight to our chests, slip it on like a dress. We’re oh, so faithfully possessed. We let ourselves be owned by things long gone: old photographs, old songs wrap us in ghosts.
And now she’s taking direct aim at my thesis. I like those old songs. I’d go so far as to say that my very identity is a carefully indexed anthology of old songs. Or the songs are at least the DNA that construct the protein, the meat of who I am. Now here’s a reconstituted Belly, inflicting upon me an altogether new and mature song about parenthood, the binding constraints of nostalgia, and the life-affirming potential of loss? You have got to be kidding. And the bitch of it is, that song reaches right into my soul with a jolt of electricity, like I’m the guy in Operation and Tanya’s holding the tweezers. But lying here on the table with my nose red (eyes, too), I feel nothing but light and warmth, because in spite of—I’ll say because of—its agenda, “Human Child” is perfect.
IT’S A BEAUTIFUL NIGHT. I’M HERE TO DRAG YOU OUTSIDE. PULL YOUR HEAD OUT OF THE SHADE, MY SUN-BLESSED BABE.
Honestly, I can’t sit here with these feelings anymore. I need to step away from this desk and go for a walk.
Shout-out to the Social Distancing Since 1985! playlist (Spotify). (See “Always Ascending.”)
For the full Klaus Dinger experience, set aside twenty minutes from your day for “Cha Cha 2000” (Apple Music, Spotify). See if I don’t give this track a post of its own, one of these days.
How wonderful this piece is!