Yeah, I guess the end is here
There is usually a before and an after of a calendar year, and typically that comes on New Year’s Eve, but 2020 was of course different.
There was a before and an after but it came much later, in March, and I sat in the middle of before and after on a foldout metal chair in the loading dock of the Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, Indiana. I loosened my tie as a Greyhound bus rumbled nearby, echoing off the walls, and I stared at the concrete flood trying to catch my breath and fighting off a strange urge to vomit.
It was the night of the turn from before to after, March 11, the final day I covered an in-person sporting event and more importantly, the day the CDC labeled COVID-19 a pandemic. I remember because the night before I watched thousands of Indiana Pacers fans walk into Bankers Life Fieldhouse from my fifth floor window, and I remember wondering if it was such a smart idea.
The next morning, after the CDC’s announcement and the cancellation of basketball tournaments across the country, I sat at the desk in my hotel room for a conference call with Nebraska head coach Fred Hoiberg, who talked with reporters about the two football players who were joining the team for Nebraska’s Big Ten Tournament game against Indiana.
He laughed at how bizarre the circumstances were. So did we.
You might already know what happened that night. But for those who don’t (mainly my lovely grandmother, an avid reader of this newsletter. Hey, Grandma) hour by hour, the world began to slowly change. Governors across the country were limiting the capacity of events to 250 or even 100, basketball conferences outright cancelled tournaments, the NBA shut down its season. And all the while, I watched this unfold courtside in an arena with about 15,000 fans, keeping one eye on Nebraska’s final blowout loss of the season and one eye on Twitter as the world turned on its axis.
That night took a bizarre, scary turn when Hoiberg was seen woozy on the bench. A video colored with irony showed Hoiberg nearly collapsed with his head in his hands, while a Nebraska assistant coach sanitized hands next to him. Hoiberg was asked to leave the arena by Big Ten officials and as I watched him leave the bench, I emailed an unfinished game story and slammed my laptop shut to look for Fred and chase what appeared to be a quickly developing story.
We were told to stay away from the locker rooms because of a sick coach and immediately the worry began to spread. Did he, like Rudy Gobert, have COVID? We’d seen Fred the day before. Did we have it? What about his players? Remember March, when we knew nothing? The panic was overwhelming as me and a fellow reporter roamed the halls looking for anyone to tell us what was going on. Fred was no longer around, and I called and texted sources asking if they knew anything. I asked a Nebraska official — who I’d worked with amicably for years — if Fred was OK. The official pointed to a security guard. “Get him out of here,” he told the cop, who pointed me back down the hallways.
With no answers near the locker rooms, I went went to the shipping hanger, where the busses carrying teams unload. Nebraska’s bus was still there. At the very least, I could say with certainty if and when the team was leaving. And so I found a metal chair and stared at the ground. The persistent grumble of the bus shut out the noise of the event staff tearing down the Big Ten Tournament and that’s when the realization that the after was kicking in really began.
After an hour of quarantine, the team was released. Fred was fine. Had the flu, but not COVID. I walked across the street and filed an updated story around 2 a.m., with plans to get out of town at 8 a.m. the next morning.
The 10-hour drive back to Omaha felt like I was trapped in an Orson Wells prank, or a big-budget Tom Cruise sci-fi thriller. I scrolled the AM radio stations, occasionally finding a news or sports talk show that could give me more updates on the country entering a pandemic. The NCAA Tournament was cancelled. Cities were being shut down. Hours would pass by with nothing but static and worry. Within days, my wife and I would need to find a thermometer, which we’d somehow gone without for three years. We’d need masks, and we’d worry about the smallest cough or sore throat. In the coming weeks, award ceremonies were cancelled, as were graduations and dinner dates and work, even.
You lived through 2020. You know I don’t need to say more. We all struggled this year.
For much of it, it felt like driving on an open highway in Illinois or Iowa, with a growing list of questions and answers that sound like static. What was OK? Who could we see? Are we being too cautious? Are we being crazy to not see them? Are you ok? How did they get it? Who died? Who has it now? What if I lose my job? What if you can’t get a job? How does this unemployment website work? Why didn’t they do something sooner? What’s worse: focusing too much on this or focusing too little? Why is this happening?
Static. All of it.
I’m not here to tell you that I’ve found any answers. Anyone who tells you they have the answers are wrong or running for a political seat, though those may go hand in hand.
But this is my final newsletter of 2020, and the only thing that felt appropriate to finalize 2020 was by writing about how I feel exiting this tremendously stupid year.
I know I’ve written quite a bit about music this year, and I can’t exactly explain why. Maybe because it’s the most accessible thing we have right now, and it’s a nice, constant distraction. Our home has always been dominated by music. In our Omaha house, we had a Sonos speaker, a shower speaker and a record player within five yards of each other.
I’ve never been great with silence. In the car I listen to podcasts. Dishes are for nostalgia playlists. I can’t even write a paper, let alone this, without a playlist of movie scores playing in the background.
In March, while on a walk with my dog, I came across a song by Phoebe Bridgers. It’s a cover, You Missed My Heart. It was torturously sad, and I clicked over to Phoebe’s work and fell into a deep, desperate hole. I have a slightly obsessive personality. If I find something I like, I make it part of me. I trade off watching The Office and Parks and Rec each year. I re-read books, Bon Iver’s first album is always near the top of my Spotify Wrapped.
Suddenly, Phoebe Bridgers became the obsession. She’s a 20-something singer from LA. Her music is hard to pin down, but the best I can put it is it sounds like you almost had a good day. It’s sad, but nearly hopeful. A mix of Elliott Smith and Taylor Swift, directed and produced by Tim Burton. Her ironic, poetic lyrics are hidden under a soft falsetto, so the cuts that come from the stories she tells are softened but still sting. Her first album, Stranger in the Alps, tells stories of funerals, abusive relationships and love letters to her hometown. My favorite is Scott Street, a short story of walking around LA. At one point, the character runs into an old friend.
I asked you: How is your sister?
I heard she got her degree
And I said: That makes me feel old
He said: What does that make me?
The outro ends with a hook sung over a huge production of strings, guitars and sounds of bike bells. “Anyway don’t be a stranger,” she sings.
I was hooked. And as lives began falling apart, as Molly’s job became uncertain, as I went on unemployment and was furloughed and as we made plans to move in with our parents, I gravitated more and more to Bridgers.
On June 18, when Molly and I knew least of our future, Phoebe Bridgers dropped her second album, Punisher. I devoured it. And it taught me the lesson I needed in 2020.
The first album felt of longing and despair. The second album sat up a bit taller. Is a bit more mature, a little more confrontational. The same falsetto sings over more electric guitars than acoustics, with bigger, louder background productions that come with a second album. Kyoto is the hit that’s been nominated for multiple Grammy’s now, a song for children of divorce written by a child of divorce.
I don't forgive you
But please don't hold me to it
Born under Scorpio skies
I wanted to see the world
Through your eyes until it happened
Then I changed my mind
Chinese Satellite deals with believing in a higher power. Punisher about meeting heroes. Graceland, Too a love song for friends who’ve been through it.
The album eases its way to the finale, I Know The End.
Appropriately, a song about the apocalypse.
This song colored my “after” in 2020. It played loudly while driving a U-Haul south through Nebraska to Kansas to our new home. It rang out in the shower. It pulsed in my car on I-70 driving to class, blared from headphones while studying. Chills usually shot down my spine while listening to it. And recently, I realized because it connects my before and after, and it gives me an idea of how to end this stupid year.
The song begins with Phoebe complaining about touring and longing for her bedroom, but her struggles with then being home and wanting to tour. She’s looking out of a window on a tour bus at the evergreen view of America’s heartland.
But slowly the song warps into something bigger. Something is wrong with the world, and taking over. A War of the Worlds-like invasion is incoming, and Phoebe is debating what to do.
When the sirens sound, you'll hide under the floor
But I'm not gonna go down with my hometown in a tornado
I'm gonna chase it
I know, I know, I know
I gotta go now
I know, I know, I know
In her first album, Phoebe doesn’t want to leave. Now, she has to, so she gets into her car and drives away. And as she does, the song changes from a finger-picking electric guitar to a constant strum, steady, like the persistent bumps of the highway. A violin comes in. There’s a steady build up as she looks out the window.
Windows down, scream along
To some America first rap, country song
A slaughterhouse, an outlet mall
Slot machines, fear of God
Windows down, heater on
Big bolts of lightning hanging low
She has no clue what’s really going on — driving in static — but she knows the world is static and she’s accepting her fate while catching the beautiful intricacies of a drive. And everytime this outro begins, I’m transported back to March 12, and that drive back to Omaha. I think of the static, and I think of driving away from the oddest experience of my life and into a new 2020. And I think the reason this song hits home for me so hard is that it isn’t just about her experience or mine. I think in 2020 we all have had moments like this, where panic, fear, gratitude, anger and acceptance converge. We’ve all driven in a car at sunset and seen the beauty, but we’ve also had to reconcile beauty this year with terror and despair, a mix of emotions that shouldn’t go in the blender but often did these last 9 months.
Phoebe goes on, and as she does, drums kick in, as do strings and trumpets and harmonies as she drives.
I'll find a new place to be from
A haunted house with a picket fence
To float around and ghost my friends
No, I'm not afraid to disappear
The billboard said, "The end is near"
I turned around, there was nothing there
Yeah, I guess the end is here
A chorus joins Phoebe on that last line and repeats it. The end is here. The end is here. The end is here. An entire band kicks in, and in unison they accept their fate.
I’ve thought about this ending nearly every day since June. Because the “end” is something that’s been so hard to figure out in 2020.
Even if you acknowledge that COVID-19 will not go away when midnight hits on Thursday, it still might be a good time to turn around and realize an end is here, because nothing about 2021 will look like 2020. The after will be a different place. We’ll enter into an era with brand new questions with nothing but static. Questions like, when can we leave the house without masks? Can we go to the Royals game? How about a concert? Can we do reunions? What about Christmas in April? Can we go back to class in person? What about graduations? What about this vaccine?
Static, still. All of it.
But new, most of it. The end of 2020 closes a page, and it may not get us to normal, but it is another small step. The world continues to be horrible. But there’s a small twinge of hope that — at the very least — I choose to see.
The thing music can do is give you words to explain what you could not.
And in such a California casual way, Phoebe told us to turn around and look.
And if you take it seriously, you’ll see we made it, even if we have no idea what is ahead.
Yeah, I guess the end is here.
Writing Music:
Note:
I just want to say thank you to everyone for indulging me in this newsletter all year. I know it has been all over the place. This following is a mix of Husker fans and family and journalism nerds (represent) and that’s an odd mix to please. But you’ve all been so supportive in these columns and I appreciate you following along.
See you in 2021.