Maybe We Should Go Back

Welcome to the Hotel California

I had a pretty musical childhood. My dad played guitar, performed and taught me all about some of the best music in the world. I grew up on a steady diet of Led Zeppelin, Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Byrds, Blue Oyster Cult, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, the Eagles, Fleetwood Mac, and lots of others, all of them bands I still listen to on the regular.

Now that my kid goes to school with me, I've been trying to find music that is less... angry than my usual metal fare for the drive. Most days we listen to Disney, my 80's playlist or my 60's/70's playlist, which we listened to today. Something about all that music just sends me back to my childhood and makes me think about my parents.

When they were in college my parents were big into the whole hippie-culture scene, the drugs, all of it. My dad even had one of those mustaches, but he was a handsome guy in his twenties. My mom was gorgeous in her bell bottoms and peasant tops. Sometimes I wish I had lived then. Would we have hung out, me and my parents? Probably. We most likely woulda been friends. Just interesting to think about. I'm sure feeling nostalgic this morning.

So back to the music. When you're a kid and there's lyrics you don't understand, your brain fills in the gaps to explain things using your own limited knowledge. Everything is literal.

Remember that song from the 90's by Ginuwine called "Pony"? At the age of nine, when that song hit the radio, I literally believed it was about a dude who owned a stable where people would pay to ride horses, and he was trying to get this girl to ride this pony he had, and he's got it all saddled up ready to go and he's like, "Okay can we do this now? Can you jump on the pony now?" I can't even hear that song without laughing my ASS off now. It is SO EXPLICIT! It literally says, "You're horny, let's do it," over and over in the chorus. I guess I just blocked those parts out since I couldn't make sense of what that meant in the context of my stable-story explanation. Ah the innocence of the innocent, and how subconsciously determined we are to remain that way as children.

Hotel California was another one. Heard that one today and my son was like, "What's this song?" because he asks about every song and then gets mad if the title isn't in the lyrics somewhere (this is a very frustrating thing I keep trying to explain to him).

I told him and then, as I drove, I started wondering what he would think about the lyrics and if it would scare him. I know this boy really, really listens to the lyrics. He will repeat them all the time or ask me about them.

I was a little worried for him because this song really creeped me out as a kid. I loved it, still do, but it was creepy and eerie. I believed it was about a hotel that looked like the one from The Shining. This guy is driving, he's sleepy, needs to stop, and then there's a "shimmering" light ahead... the Hotel California. It's all fine and great when he checks in, even though there's some foreshadowing because he wonders if this could be Heaven or Hell. He doesn't know it's haunted yet, though. The first signs of the paranormal are these voices "calling from far away" that actually wake him up in the middle of the night, chanting, "Welcome to the Hotel California! Such a lovely place," yada yada you know the rest. Creepy GHOST voices chanting in the night at this creepy ass Shining hotel.

Then one of the ghosts tells him, "We are all just prisoners here of our own device." They try to get away, "but they just can't kill the beast" (of the hotel's psychic grip on them). So the guy is freaked out and starts running for the door in the middle of the night, and then the scariest line of all comes, the one that used to give me goosebumps: "You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave." Just like Jack Torrence in The Shining when you see him in that picture at the end from the 1920's, implying he has always been at the hotel in some spiritual sense and always will be. No escaping the hotel. And that's where all the ghosts came from, and now this guy will be one too at the haunted Hotel California. His fate is sealed.

I believed my own story so much that I was actually shocked to find out later that this song is actually about the Hollywood scene and how it all looks so glamorous but under it everyone is lonely, addicted to drugs and money, and that's why she says they are prisoners of their own device. They can "never leave" simply because they WON'T leave. They are in their own prison, and they can't kill the beast that owns their souls. Obviously this metaphorical version makes way more sense than my Shining story, though it's not as fun to think about.

This is such a true song it hurts my heart to hear it now, and I kinda wish it was about a haunted hotel. That's easier than being reminded that you are your own prison and that you can't get better until you somehow get to a point where you wake up and want something more out of life. Then you have to be willing and able to go after that life, kill the beast inside you and leave everything from the old one behind. It's scary. It's new and unknown. It almost sounds impossible, and that's the point: the hopelessness of the situation.

On the flip side of that hopelessness though, I see hope because see you still have choices. As long as you have choices, you have a fighting chance. I'm always amazed by the number of people in life that believe they "had no choice" but to do whatever they did. You do have a choice. It might not be an easy one, or one that you like, or one that makes everyone happy, but it's still a choice. It places such limitations on you as a human being to believe you are without choice. I guess that's mostly what I take away from this song now. It was a good reminder I badly needed today.