Black Hole Sun

It's a funny thing living and raising my kids in the city where I went to college. For the most part I like it -- I get to be one of the people who is here to bear witness as institutions where my friends and I wiled away countless hours close their doors -- and in this era of cell phones and Facebook, it is really easy for those of us who are here to share these passings with friends further afield.

Being here also allows me to stay connected to my youth and therefore more compassionate about some of the less attractive features of the excesses of youth. Riding our bikes downtown to the Farmer's Market, my kids and I saw a series of piles of puke, about which I said "looks like somebody had too much to drink last night" without judgment. This is important, this lack of judgment, and it's an important thing to teach kids. I've seen what happens when we try to teach kids things in a really black and white way that aren't necessarily black and white -- take smoking for an example. I so often hear kids vehemently repeating what they have heard their parents say within earshot of a smoker: "That's bad for you! Why is he doing that? Isn't that bad for you? Smoking can kill you!" The parent is usually quietly embarrassed and I always feel bad for the smoker. Downtown after our puke-paved ride, we saw someone smoking. My daughter quietly asked me after we'd passed him: "Isn't smoking bad for you, Mom?" And I answered: "It definitely is not a healthy thing to put into your body." And so she asked: "Then why is he doing it?" and I had the opportunity to explain that for some people it also feels really good (stopping short of calling it a "serious buzz enhancer" as I've been known to do) and that sometimes we make choices based on what's best for our body and sometimes we don't. I told her I used to smoke, and part of the reason I smoked was because I liked the feeling I got from it, but I ultimately quit because it didn't feel good in my body.

There are so many songs related to my own time of excess, but the one that has been coming to me recently is Soundgarden's Black Hole Sun. One not-unusual night in the early 90's, I had enough to drink at a frat party that I really wasn't sure exactly what had transpired. I was left in the morning to piece together the evidence: I had a hangover and a Soundgarden CD that I hadn't had going into the night. Hmmmm...

Long after that hangover faded, I listened to this song over and over and over again (the excess wasn't limited to booze and cigs). The video accompanying that last link is pretty goofy; approaching 40 now, I'm more inclined to watch this acoustic version of Chris Cornell, who I think is really sexy in his flip-flops.

Black Hole Sun won't you come and wash away the rain...