You've Got a Heart So Big It Could Crush This Town

Even walls come down

I don’t believe in muses.

A muse is a sexist concept of a woman who inspires an artist to create. My question has always been, why doesn’t the muse just make her own art? No one’s ever given me a decent answer to that question.

That said, the spirit of Tom Petty has been my muse for a little over a week now.

Last Friday I saw Mike Campbell—Tom’s right-hand man in The Heartbreakers—in concert. A good, if not somewhat long, four-hour show on what would have been Tom’s 73rd birthday, where Campbell played their songs on Tom’s guitars. The veil between the living and the dead is the thickness of guitar strings.

A man, celebrating a man he loved. Mike Campbell in Los Angeles, October 20th, 2023

The show moved me enough that, as I drove around L.A. with a streaming service’s Tom Petty essential songs playlist as my soundtrack, hollering that we should get to the point, roll another joint, turn the radio loud because I’m too alone to be proud. You don’t know how it feels to be me.

I found myself alone on my birthday. My plans to celebrate with friends at Club Tee Gee didn’t happen. Everyone canceled the dinner and hang-out portion of the night, which didn’t leave me in the mood for that night’s concert, a position that opened me up to an hour of getting berated via text by one of those friends.

If you haven’t learned that sometimes in life, we have to be flexible, I just don’t know what to tell you.

Earlier that day, I had coffee with another friend, someone I’d forged a deep bond with through the Covid years. Each Los Angeles trip was highlighted by our almost-daily coffee dates that began and end ended with long hugs that erased 1,200 miles.

Except this day when our greeting hug was thwarted. Our usual coffeehouse was overrun with John Carpenter fans gathered for an event—Hollywood shit. My friend hopped into my passenger seat at the Melrose and La Brea, breathless and a little discombobulated. We’d never been in a car together, and here we were in that close proximity, in Hollywood traffic with no idea where we were going, although we quickly found another coffeehouse and settled in for what seemed like our usual drink-and-chat hour.

“Well, I need to go.” He stuck out his hand to shake. “Happy birthday.”

“What? No hug?” I’m sure there was a bit of a snort in my tone because I was shocked. We have never parted ways without a rib-crusher. I took his hand anyway. He scrunched his face as he stood and pulled his hand back.

“Eh. Your perfume will get all over me.” His expression was sheer disgust like I’d hosed myself down with quarter-a-squirt public toilet cologne. He walked home instead of taking my offer for a ride.

I haven’t heard from him since. The next day I sent him photos of two dogs I met at another coffeehouse, like I wasn’t bruised. Nothing.

Okay, so my birthday itself was terrible, save for the post-handshake visit to Hollywood Forever Cemetery, although Chris Cornell’s grave left me shaken and sad. The rest of the trip was great.

Monday evening I took myself to Club Tee Gee and did not repeat my previous visit. I paced myself on the mezcal, eavesdropped on the old men discussing progressive eyeglass lenses, and had a conversation with a woman named Ann, an art therapist whose parents happened to own a recording studio in Seattle. She was a kid in the room while Soundgarden recorded “Badmotorfinger” and the Afghan Whigs recorded part of “Gentlemen". I hung onto her words, soaking in her stories, knowing I’d likely never see her again. That’s how bar meetings go.

I asked the bartender if I could have one of the mezcal prayer candles like the one that burned in front of me on my drunk night in April. She obliged.

On Tuesday, I hurtled home, slept in my own bed, got up Wednesday morning, and drove to Kansas City where I picked up CJ at their dorm in a torrential downpour. We ate DoorDashed mac and cheese in my hotel room for my belated birthday dinner, and I swam in the torrent of words as they told me all the latest from art school. I love these moments. They might be my favorite part of parenting.

Not being a “concert person” as they say, CJ enjoyed a roommate-free evening at the hotel while I went to see Wilco in concert with more friends. Maybe this time things would go better.

Sandy, Stan, me, and John pre-gaming.

I hadn’t met John before that evening when he met me at the door to the venue’s bar with my ticket. He’s a traveler who told me that night that, the first time he listened to “Blood on the Tracks” he decided he wanted to live his life like the people in Bob Dylan’s songs. As someone who spent a year living like Woody Guthrie, I knew that John and I were at least somewhat of the same spirit. He’s a traveler, more so than me, living in Alaska and going around the world to see bands he loves with his partner who lives in Germany.

We connected in a large group chat of Wilco fans when he said he had an extra ticket for the Kansas City show and I called dibs, not realizing it was a beautiful spot in the second row with a reserved seat. Usually, the spots closest to the stage at Wilco shows are general admission, where people stand for hours to nab a spot at the rail, then stand through the opening act, set-up and tear-down, and the two-hour main event. Because my knees hadn’t allowed me to stand for long periods of time in years, it had been a long time since I’d been so close to the stage. I’d made my peace with sitting in the back, in the balcony, unable to see, just letting the live music bathe me as I sat, head back and eyes closed, surrounded by the tall buildings of people standing around me.

Even though we hadn’t met I knew of John from other shows. He’s always at the stage, dancing to every song. But we sat during the rather quiet opening act, quickly giving snippets of our life stories between songs. But then Wilco roared out with the opening track from their new album, and he was up, arms raised, long white hair flowing as he moved to the music while I sat.

I still don’t trust that my body is going to work. It didn’t work for so long that my brain was still in protective mode, keeping me back. I sat for the first few songs next to John as he moved, wishing I was further along in physical therapy, that I hadn’t run so hard in the lead-up to the concert. Twenty-four hours earlier, I’d been on a plane. And then I drove across the state of Missouri. My brain said, “Absolutely not” when thoughts of dancing popped in.

But then they played, “I Am Trying to Break Your Heart,” as they do towards the beginning of most of their shows. Nothing novel or new about this except this time, halfway through, I realized nothing was stopping me from dancing.

I stood. And I moved. There was no pain. Like swaying in the cushion of water, I rocked side to side, an American aquarium drinker who assassins down the avenue.

I was dancing at a Wilco show, an act I took for granted for so many years until 2019 when I realized I could no longer do it. The last time I really whole-heartedly danced at a Wilco show was in Memphis in October 2017. Less than three weeks earlier I had taken a bad fall. The day after my concert dancing, my right knee was swollen to twice its size, and I had the first moment of realizing there was something very wrong happening in my body.

That night I was prompted to dance when Wilco played, “The Waiting” in tribute to Tom Petty who’d died days prior.

The waiting is the hardest part
Every day you see one more card
You take it on faith, you take it to the heart
The waiting is the hardest part

Through the rest of the show in Kansas City, I alternated, sitting during the slower songs, popping back up during the uptempo stuff. I toasted beers with another dancer I’d just met, breathless as my body scrambled to remember how to dance and sing at the same time.

By the final song, I was up, my head thrown back watching the fog machine output swirling up to the distant peak of the theater ceiling, my eyes fluttering shut, then open, panting and singing the melody to “Spiders” at Jeff Tweedy’s request, telling us to sing and clap, that no one is too cool to not clap, the air between our hands is all we have.

When I tipped my head back down to look at the stage, he was looking in my direction, feet away, grinning. I smiled back, and for a moment, the band and crowd exploding like a fragile bomb around us, I was myself again. I was myself, living my life exactly as I always wanted to live it, where I am most myself: bathed in music, body moving, connected to band, people, friends, and strangers all together in a song that extolls being alone.

“I, I’m nothing/My cousin/I’m you” Jeff Tweedy

I never thought I’d be able to do that again. When we were finished I rushed out the door to catch my ride, giving John a hasty hug, reminding him to let me know what I owe him for the ticket, knowing that really, I owe him the part of my life that returned to me that night.

Thursday, I returned to St. Louis for another night of Wilco with the friend I reconnected with after ten years apart. I hadn’t planned on going to the St. Louis show since I was going to Kansas City, but my friend wanted to experience a Wilco show with me. I took this as a time to celebrate—the reconnection, the end of my birth week, everything. The world is on fire and I’m grasping at joy at every turn, whether it’s eating a buttered ham sandwich on Melrose or refreshing a bond I thought I had lost. A pair of box seats had fallen into my lap for the show, a totally different vantage point, and a perfect place to start. I built what I thought would be a perfect night around this. Not just for my friend, but for myself because my God, I am back.

But something turned after the show. My friend, uncomfortable for reasons I don’t know, left early. The next morning, a good morning text, a thank you, asking how I was doing. “Not well,” and then nothing.

After the show and the surprising departure, as I sat and cried, I picked up my phone to distract myself from the pain of finding myself alone, again, and there was a message from John, sent earlier in the evening. Apparently he’d seen us as we rushed into the show and I didn’t see his message until hours later. I sent an apology, and he responded with a story:

He’d run into problems with security at the St. Louis show. A guard wasn’t a fan of him dancing in a spot that had been vacated by guests who left early. She threatened to kick him out. He told her that he hoped she got her job promotion. And I laughed through my tears, loving my new friend’s perspective.

Then he told me about seeing The Pogues in New York in the 1980s, where he was also dodging overzealous security guards who eventually caught him, literally throwing him out on his face, leaving him bloody with a busted knee. All to say that he understood a bit about my journey back to the front of the stage:

All this happened to me because I was dancing where I wasn’t supposed to. Ever since I’ve decided I’ll dance wherever the fuck I want. You are on your way. Don’t ever stop.

Words I didn’t know I needed when I needed them the most, I told him. To which he replied with only four word, the most life-giving words I have ever been gifted:

I believe in you.

In a week I seem to have lost six people I cherished. Lost in the vortex of their silence and my hurt. Upon landing in Burbank a week before the night I danced, I got word that a friend who completed rehab earlier this year had relapsed. When I asked why and he responded, “Because I’m an addict,” I pointed out that he’s an addict who stopped doing the work. Silence. And in that silence, I know he’s gone, too. Whether it’s by stepping out of my life or drowning in a bottle, he’s gone.

But John believes in me. A stranger who moved me to dance when I thought I couldn’t. Who gave me space to move, and the reminder that dancing wherever the fuck I want is essential to being who I am. Even if I’m dancing alone.

So what does this have to do with Tom Petty being my muse? In this awful, beautiful, life-altering week, Tom has been the soundtrack. As I drove around Los Angeles on my birthday, a song I didn’t think I knew came on the playlist. I’d switched past it several times but finally, a note in the piano opening triggered my memory. It wasn’t one of his big hits, just a song tucked into the soundtrack of a 1990s indie movie I’d never seen.

You’ve got a heart so big

It could crush this town

And I can’t hold back forever.

Even walls fall down.

Since reconnecting, my friend from a decade ago said, “I was afraid to love you hard back then.” I asked for some clarification, gave a month or so, and revisited the question shortly before Thursday’s abrupt departure. Maybe it’s because I’ve got a heart so big it could crush this town. It feels like it. Like I love so hard it terrifies people, crushes them. But it’s who I am and not something I can keep caged. Not even broken knees or my big broken, crushing heart can curtail the reality of who I am: a lover, alone, dancing wherever the fuck I want to.

Thank you, John. And Jeff. And Tom. Muses, each and every one.