Whether you’re traveling in the bus with the window pulled open, just lost in thoughts, or whether it’s the gloom of night and you toss and turn as you mull over an incident from a previous time, or even while you’re walking down the road with music in your ears, what comes to your head the most? Who pops into your mind? What are the reasons? Music has been an outlet for many a sad soul, not just creatively, but also cognitively. That, and the given foundation that to each, his/her own situation and interpretation, the same song can be seen in multiple perspectives for different people. The same song can even be interpreted from different perspectives by the same person at different instances in their life too. Well here’s this writer’s thoughts on a song that has accompanied many a lonely bus ride.
From childhood itself, we’ve grown up with attachments to certain individuals dear to us. People we look up to with wide eyes and talk about in tones of admiration. We’ve aspired to be like them, in other words, our role models. But the question is while growing up, did the position for your role model in your heart change lineup? Did more positions open up? Let’s take a plunge into these thoughts with “My Hero”, from the Foo Fighter’s 1997 album, The Color, and the Shape.
The double-tracked drum intro, a beautiful combination of two separate patterns on the toms, something that brings out a firm yet surprisingly simple state of mind. As a child, your admiration would be on your parents. As a teenager, your teachers and characters within society might join in to share positions in your heart. Growing up more, certain peers might join in. Fictional characters might join in too. But at each point in your life, you notice fallible points in your heroes.
You realize that your parents don’t really have the answers for everything. In fact, they might not even know what’s best for you. Thinking back, maybe your teachers weren’t that compassionate and understanding after all. Or the societal figures you idolized may not be actually worth idolizing. Maybe, the person you always counted on and trusted wasn’t as perfect and as fitting, to your thoughts, as you wanted to.
“Too alarming now to talk about
Take your pictures down and shake it out
Truth or consequence, say it aloud
Use that evidence, race it around…”
In that moment of realization, you start wondering about the mistakes they’ve made. At one point, even going to the point where you consider, “Why did I even look up to that person?” Stockpiling all the evidence left as clues from time to time, you piece it all together proving over and over again that your hero isn’t really perfect, or as perfect as you thought so.
But Dave Grohl’s voice on the chorus pops that person into your recollections suddenly. “There goes my hero,” you wonder, with all those mistakes, what do you do? Is that person really someone you want around in your life? How and why did you even admire that person earlier? Take a break as the music fades out and focuses solely on Pat Smear’s guitar riff before the drums kick in again.
“Don’t the best of them bleed it out?
While the rest of them peter out?
Truth or consequence, say it aloud
Use that evidence, race it around…”
Take some time off and let the words pour in. No matter how magical a person seems, they are in the end human. And in a world full of varied traditions and habits, multitudes of understanding and appreciating, all humans, have their faults. Regardless of your past and present perceptions of a person, there are just some moments that overcome any revelation time might show to you.
But the highlight is simply that while you might see the more vulnerable side of your heroes someday, that’s because they don’t try to hide their real side from you. Rather than backing down and leaving when things get messy, they’d bleed out themselves and stay with you, even at the risk of revealing flaws. That itself is a point to them for how genuinely they care about you.
Mulling over these thoughts, let Nate Mendel’s bass lines carry you off to realize, “There goes my hero, (he’s) ordinary.” This time, you’re sure that you’re not letting go over a human error, but you’re watching your hero go about in life with all those mistakes because he/she is ordinary. Because at the end of the day, real heroes are those who are flawed, but you can accept them for being who they are, as they are.
And as the song fades off to an end, you can let your thoughts wander more. Go ahead, close your eyes. Who is/are the person/people that come to your mind when you think of the word “hero”? Think of all the times they’ve stayed with you no matter how bad things were. Think of how ordinary they are, and yet, so special to you. Open your eyes then, and take a deep breath and realize that the stories we tell, the paths we’ve taken, are filled with heroes. Realize that what makes them truly amazing, are in fact their flaws. And at this point, you might even begin to realize that as an ordinary person, even you might play an extra-ordinary role in someone’s life…
By Rtr. Dasith Tilakaratna
Featured Image Courtesies: https://bit.ly/2RtYFFZ
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