Take a Fast Car and Keep on Driving
The year was 1988 when in just four chords Tracy Chapman reminded us that the saddest thing in the world was not the absence of hope, but the loss of it.
Seven years before my birth, using the unique metaphor of speeding along in a fast car in the prime of your youth with someone you love and thinking that with a person this special and with a night this glowing and with a car this fast, that regardless of your current situation the possibilities and, most importantly, the hope for a brighter future were infinite. This idea, this metaphor, and the progression of its story bring me to tears every time I hear the beginning strums of those four chords.
“Maybe together we can get somewhere
Any place is better
Starting from zero got nothing to lose
Maybe we’ll make something
Me myself I got nothing to prove”
Years pass, but not enough for the fast car of hope to slow down. Even though you’re not who, what, or where you thought you would be, in your mind that car and that hope still cruise through the sparkling night. So you do what you can to keep it going. You fill it with gas, and you wash and shine it every now and then, with the knowledge that one day in the not-so-distant future you will be in the passenger seat.
“I got a plan to get us out of here
I been working at the convenience store
Managed to save just a little bit of money”
But as they do to everyone, the pages of the calendar turn. The unexpected, an awful certainty of living, strikes, and you are left in a stalled car. In a frozen state of hope as you pause your dreams, as you pause your epic getaway to deal with the unexpected, the cruel; and mostly, the undeserved.
“See my old man’s got a problem
He live with the bottle that’s the way it is
He says his body’s too old for working
His body’s too young to look like his
My mama went off and left him
She wanted more from life than he could give
I said somebody’s got to take care of him
So I quit school and that’s what I did”
As you are paused in this state of unexpected tragedy, nostalgia frequently hits you and you remember those nights when with his trusted arm around you and the wind blasting past you through the windows, you saw a person you thought could lead you out. You saw a way out. That memory is so precious and alive in your head that you hold onto it as if it is oxygen bringing you back from the brink of death. Accordingly, you convince yourself that the car is not stalled but merely parked. And as soon as you find the keys hidden in some foreign pocket of your purse the two of you, together, will speed far far away from this place and drive oh so hopefully into the night once more.
Again, the pages of the calendar fly. Again, time passes. And that trusted hand that once held your shoulder has now become calloused, old and wrinkled; and most painful of all has lost hope that that once shiny and new car could ever be capable of getting you anywhere.
You wash that car though, now alone. You keep it as shiny and fresh as you can while you attend to every burden and duty required of you until you can pack your battered suitcase and leave.
“I got a job that pays all our bills
You stay out drinking late at the bar
See more of your friends than you do of your kids
I’d always hoped for better
Thought maybe together you and me would find it”
Decades pass and nostalgia and hope make way for some form of acceptance. That car is now rusty and permanently parked in your garage. That night so long ago that you can barely remember the face of the man who tenderly held the wheel in one hand and your shoulder in the other.
“And your arm felt nice wrapped ‘round my shoulder
And I had a feeling that I belonged
I had a feeling I could be someone, be someone, be someone”
You are near the end of your time now. Your hair is grey and lacking shine. And most painful of all, you are in the exact same place as you were all those years and nights ago. Except your getaway partner is now long gone and the mechanics you’ve hired have all declared the car a write-off. But, as much as your hand now sometimes shakes, as much as it is now wrinkled, in the very darkest hours of the night you think of that special time and that special feeling and you store every ounce of faith that you can in not only the hope but the fact that that rusty old thing you once cherished so much can still take you anywhere you want to go. And just as fast as you need it to.
“You got a fast car
Is it fast enough so you can fly away?
You gotta make a decision
Leave tonight or live and die this way”
It was 1988, long before I was born or had any concept of years, that Tracy Chapman reminded us, both tragically and beautifully, that with age comes not only the loss of hope but the perseverance of it. And ultimately, it is our choice whether we choose to have faith in that steering wheel that so long ago drove us so enchantingly fast through the night and that made us think, for the happiest and most hopeful of moments, that we could not only be anything we choose but everything we want.
