The Song That Almost Killed Me
"Red Cape Diver", by Foxy Shazam, Introducing (2008)
TW: This one is about suicide.
If you don’t know Foxy Shazam, I suggest skipping this one. Not for pretentious “You wouldn’t understand” hipster reasons, but because whether or not you like them, they’re annoying as shit, and I really don’t want to be responsible for exposing your perfect brain to their antics. You might recognize their vocalist, Eric Nally, the Evil Freddie Mercury, from that Macklemore song about mopeds. His big party trick onstage, besides being a stupendous singer, is eating a handful of lit cigarettes like pretzels sticks. Why? Why, indeed. That is the general reaction one has to these clowns. The inevitable reply: why not?
A friend of mine recently said, “Carl, I don’t mean this in a bad way, but whenever you show me a song I either love it or loathe it. No in-between.” I played him this one and he said, “Yeah, that’s a loathe.”
What’s going on with “Red Cape Diver”? It starts with a tense, movie-score style piano, and works its way into a funky little groove. A story about a bullfighter. I don’t think it’s a metaphor at all. I think Eric Nally is like Tom Cruise and when he goes into character, he really believes it. He is actually a matador staring down his death. That’s the only explanation I can manage for the way he throws himself into the chorus: one huge, agonized, scream after another. I fear for this man’s life and lungs. My friend asked, “What the fuck did he just say? Fire your penis?” It’s “fire torpedoes” but do the words really matter? The delivery is everything. Not so to my friend who also heard “Hug your bambinos” as “Hug your big penis.” Got brain on the brain, says more about him than the song, right?
The line no one mishears:
I don’t want to die.
Please don’t let me die.
Please don’t, please don’t let me die.
I’ve spent some time convinced I wanted nothing more than to be nothing. Convinced I was better off dead. This isn’t a story about how Eric Nally saved my life. He didn’t, and every aspect of his songwriting tests my patience to its feeble limits. There came a time, however, when I realized I did not, for the time being, want to die at all. I was lying in a hospital bed with two pints of blood sloshing around inside my left lung.
I’d had a bad day. Took a drive through my hometown with the windows down and the music as loud as it could go. It wasn’t Foxy Shazam, but A Day To Remember, “Heartless,” the remaster featured as a bonus track on the reissue of For Those Who Have Heart. I played it twice in a row and screamed along hard enough to rupture my lung. I didn’t know a better way to feel better. I bled internally for almost two days before getting help.
Obviously, I didn’t die.
But man could this be any more on the nose? Bottled up my anger so long that when I finally let it out, I got a good look at the grim reaper only to see my reflection.
I’ve seen a tweet a couple times that’s like “80s music is just ‘I like to have sex’ *synth break*” that then got repurposed to something along the lines of “2000s music is just ‘I wish I was dead’ *breakdown*”. How sweet the siren song of self-destruction sounds, and how validating to hear our pain echoed.
Hope is one of those things that gets bandied about so often it loses all meaning. “Red Cape Diver” isn’t exactly a hopeful song. If the bridge is to be believed, our hero does not make it out of the ring alive. In my hometown some local entrepreneur started an anti-bullying campaign called H.O.P.E, to keep kids from killing themselves. The acronym stands for “Hold On, Possibilities Exist” which I find insulting; the kind of condescension that would never comfort me in the depths of my depression.
My friend Abby died by suicide last summer. I’ve lived close enough to that edge that I don’t blame her, though I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about what I could’ve said to change things. If you’ve got an idea, let me know, because I’ve come up with nothing. My therapist says this is a healthy development—acceptance.
My friends and I still joke about death. Doomers. Can you blame us? Shit sucks. It isn’t hope I feel shouting along to Foxy Shazam, but I appreciate the naked honesty. The way Nally instructs and confesses, “Make sure they know you’re scared. I’m so scared.” I think that’s why I walked back from the edge: fear. What if death isn’t a release from pain? What if the catharsis only makes things worse?
The other day, I drove over a patch of ice. As the car fishtailed, I knew what I really wanted.
Why are you still here? Get off the toilet and tell someone you love them. Email me. You don’t even have to say you love me—I’ll know.