valley

as many of my friends and family know, I have a hobby of collecting cassette tapes. This is something that I started doing last year; I wanted to engage with the local music scene, find new music, and rebel against the culture in which we no longer own the media we interact with. Most of my tapes are purchased on what I can only describe as a sort of cosmic attraction. I stare at the tape rack at the record store and pick out three that speak to me.

One of the tapes I picked up last year was valley by lightweight champion. It’s an incredibly short album, at only five songs. Lightweight champion is, as I found out, a local band with a small discography. It ended up being one of the best tapes, if not the best, that I’ve gotten so far. Not just in the sense of the music itself, but in its impact on me.

The first time I played it, I was in the shower. It’s hard to hear songs over the water, so I don’t know why that was the choice I made, but even despite this, I picked up on enough of the songs for them to resonate. Actually, I began to cry, without even fully hearing the lyrics.

That morning, I was getting coffee with my friends, and I decided to play the album in my car on the way down. When I heard the songs more clearly, I cried again.

The context in which I was listening to this album was what spurred this reaction. I was in one of the hardest periods in my life – last year, I was going through some serious health issues, for which the cause would not be identified until December.

There was one song in particular that really resonated with me, which was “Underperforming.”

The lyrics are as follows:

On the eve of my decision

I know I promised to call

But when I woke up in the morning

I didn’t do anything at all

Now who’s this lazy, condescending

Spirit that haunts my body now

Well I can’t seem to shake him

and he keeps

Underperforming under pressure

and he’s always in mourning

Over the reason for the distance

between you and I

I know that we made plans here

I even wrote it out on my arm

But when I laid down at four in the morning

I didn’t set an alarm

Now are these conscious and intentional

Decisions that haunt my body now?

Well I can’t seem to shake them,

they keep me

Underperforming under pressure

and they’re always in mourning

over the reason for the distance

between you and I

In my dreams,

I saw radiant beams of sunlight,

The cornerstones of my life in succession

And down below

in the valley of my memories

you stood amongst the greenery

and your mouth, it said let it go

When I saw you at the grocery store

I couldn’t look in your eye

My nerves all overcame me

And so I went to the car and cried

Now are these actions my true feelings?

I swear that they haunt my body now

And I can’t seem to change them,

they keep me

Underperforming under pressure

and I’m always avoiding

every reason for the distance

between you and I

I’m going to preface this with a note about why this song became so personal for me – when I first listened to it, the “you” in this song became not another person, but the person I wanted to be, my idealized self. Reading it that way changes the entire meaning of the song, but, in my opinion, the meaning of art is up to the interpretation of the audience.

The theme about these negative traits haunting one’s body resonated with me deeply, given that I was going through health issues that felt as though my body was being haunted. Having hypoglycemic episodes left me fatigued and unable to focus, and I sometimes felt as though I was being lazy; as though this was “conscious and intentional.” Questioning whether these were my true feelings or simply part of what I was going through was commonly on my mind.

When it comes to the idea of “underperforming,” that was a defining point of struggle for me. I felt like I couldn’t manage what I had to at work and in my personal life, and I wasn’t doing anything up to my standards. The lead-in from the aforementioned lyrics captured how I was coming to know that my “underperformance” was a result of my physical circumstances. I hold myself to high standards and take pride in my work, and being unable to meet that for myself day in and day out was hugely upsetting. Giving myself grace was completely unfamiliar to me before, but, as this went on, learning how to do that was the only way to keep myself sane.

The bridge section was of particular importance to me. As I was going through this incredibly tumultuous time, I often found myself reflecting on my life up to that point, especially in regards to my career. I got out my box of keepsakes given to me by kids I had worked with in my programs, and that, for me, was reflective of the cornerstones of my life.

Keeping in mind that I interpreted “you” as the best version of myself, the next portion had me visualizing myself saying to “let it go.” I had to let go of the worst parts of my past, the struggles I had at present, the job that wasn’t working out, to become that person.

There’s a lyric from another song on the album, Winter Leaves, that goes: “the space in the sky as the albatross flies / is the end and the beginning.” As a figure of speech, albatross represent a significant psychological burden. All of those things were dragging me to the precipice of despair, and letting it go, letting it fly, was how I could close that chapter and have a new beginning.

Despair nipped at the edges of my psyche; the bit about the grocery store in the song struck me because the hypoglycemic episodes had embarrassed and scared me enough that I was reticent to go even go to the grocery store. I was becoming more and more withdrawn. I had a sense of shame that I couldn’t manage such a basic errand without massive stress, and it could be overwhelming at times.

I wanted to circle back to the beginning of the song at the end here, specifically due to the gravity of my commentary. Though I maintained a positive outlook as best as I could and tried to take things in stride, towards the end of the year my physical condition and symptoms weighed on me heavily. At my lowest points, suicide did cross my mind. I had made good progress on building a live I enjoyed living, but the severity of my illness could bring up extremely dark feelings. If I hadn’t gotten an explanation when I did, it felt like that decision would be one I would have to make; not knowing what I was going through, I wasn’t even sure that I would be able to recover. I worried, but not without genuine reason, that whatever was going on might take my life.

Instead of dwelling on it and letting it consume me, I made decisions that would give me a better life when, or if, I recovered. I took time to develop myself as a person, to engage with my hobbies, to spend time with friends. That kept me going then, and gave me the ability to thrive later on.

Finding this song when I did gave me the words I didn’t have. There are times when you find good music, and others when good music finds you. What I went through was unimaginably difficult, but I’m grateful for many of the things that came out of that time, this album included. Though I’ve since been able to recover and, in my opinion, succeed what I had pictured as my best self, I’ve kept listening to it. It’s one that I think I will hold near and dear to my heart for the rest of my life.