The Rolling Stones - Shine a Light
Make Every Song You Sing Your Favorite Tune
As a star burns through its fuel and begins to cool, the outward forces of pressure drop. When the pressure drops low enough in a massive star, gravity suddenly takes over and the star collapses in seconds. This collapse produces the explosion we call a supernova. For several years I was madly in love with a supernova of a woman. We’ll call her Kelly. This was not a healthy love. This was more like “You make me want to set my car on fire,” and “You make me want to walk into a bar and drink it.” She was gorgeous and funny and charismatic and completely out of her mind. We fucked all the time. We stayed up all night and wrecked hotel rooms together. I wrote poetry for and about this woman. I got into physical confrontations on her behalf. My dad wanted me to marry her. What I didn’t realize at the time was just how bottomless and all-consuming her addictions were. Addictive personalities don’t manifest themselves in the form of sound financial planning and pilates. No one gets hooked on yoga like they do cocaine. They drown in an endless stream of gin and tonics and unsafe sex with many partners.
When you're drunk in the alley, baby, with your clothes all torn
And your late-night friends leave you in the cold, gray dawn
Whoa, just seemed too many flies on you
I just can't brush them off- The Rolling Stones, Shine a Light
We each showed up drunk at the other’s apartment crying and shouting in a madcap urge to be heard and loved in a wildly narcissistic way. We used melodramatic overtures to express the coming supernova. Sometimes it worked. Sometimes it had the opposite effect. We lied to each other often in an effort to rekindle a flame that was never fully extinguished, until it was thoroughly out. I once remarked to her that no one was filming our candid moments. So many instances with her feel as if I was looking at a snapshot photograph in the third person years from then. So many moments with her felt as if it was a scripted presentation of vulnerability and honesty, instead of authenticity. We were Academy-worthy actors. I was never strong enough, capable enough, or trustworthy enough for her to let me glimpse the darkness she held stubbornly in much the same way a child holds a stuffed animal. I empathize. I held a torch for her for a remarkably long time.
Saw you stretched out in room ten o'nine
With a smile on your face and a tear right in your eye
Oh couldn't see to get a line on you
My sweet honey love-The Rolling Stones, Shine a Light
Kelly died on her birthday in New York City, not yet in her middle 40s. The flame extinguished. A doctor said heart failure was the legal cause of death. No autopsy was performed at her family’s urging. No toxicology test ever revealed what I know killed her. I had written a letter to her a few years prior telling her I had to distance myself in order to grow fully into the person I wanted to be, the person I needed to be. She put up no fight and moved on gracefully. I was sipping coffee in my kitchen when I got the call about her death. I cried for a while, and in my tears, I turned my stereo on, my stereo being my closest ally throughout all of life’s significant moments. The Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street is a great many things. It’s reckless, swaggering, and sexual. It’s brooding and rebellious. It’s wholly hedonistic. I poured a highball of Bourbon and let the needle drop. It was time to get good and drunk. Shine a Light is a forceful push for divine kindness. That was all I ever wanted for her.
May the good Lord shine a light on you
Yeah, make every song you sing your favorite tune-The Rolling Stones, Shine a Light
Shine a Light is, at its heart, a gospel song by the greatest bar band in human history. Kelly was never fit for a church ceremony. Shots and beers in a greasy bar fit her better than an altar. She wouldn’t have it any other way. Let us pray.