"There Is A Light That Never Goes Out", But It Does Fade

Can you have a deep relationship with a band you don't particularly like all that much?

It sounds like an absurd question, but I do ask it in sincerity. Following the latest developments in the self-conflagration of Morrissey, I revisited the music of his I love in spite of his personality. During that binge, a certain song came on that sparked feelings in me the way it always has, and it caught my attention how that one song can be so important when the band is not.

The song is "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out", one of the seminal hits of The Smith's short run as one of the most important bands in the world. I will be honest and say I have never really gotten into The Smiths. I enjoy jangle pop, and I obviously have an appreciation for Morrissey, but his most famous work is hard for me to fully embrace. There are a handful of songs I will always love, but by and large I find Morrissey more interesting after he set out on his own.

In my college years, I came across someone who was a huge fan of everything to do with Morrissey. She tried to convince me of his greatness, and while that might have never quite happened, she is the reason for whatever relationship I have with his music. Oh yes, at that time I was the quarry.

I rarely think about that time anymore, mostly because it strikes me as a figment of my imagination. However, it was a connection I needed at the time, and despite the abrupt ending to the memory, I can remain thankful to have had the experience when it helped me out. The sudden end should have been obvious to me, because if this was the song that defined whatever we were, it was written in bright lights in front of my eyes the whole time.

The song is a calling for a connection to someone who can take us away from the world we know, because we don't feel like we belong there anymore. It's that misplaced angst that has made Morrissey beloved to people, because everyone who is odd is looking for someone who shares the same affectations. Just as there are cliques of popular people, so too do the outcasts filter into segmented bins. Being unusual is not a character in and of itself.

Morrissey doesn't care where the character he is singing to takes him, because there is nowhere that feels like home. He is aching to feel something, anything, and that requires something new to break through the ennui of the familiar. The chords cycle again and again with their bright, jangly tone, like how the sunrise is a mechanism shining light upon our faults and unhappiness every morning. It's the brightness of the music that makes Morrissey's tortured howl so effective, conveying to us what it feels like to be unhappy in a crowd of smiling faces. It's as if we have been put into the wrong world, and only we can see the truth for what it is.

When the chorus comes, and Morrissey sings about double-decker buses crashing into us, and ten ton trucks killing us, the sudden and violent end is seen as mercy. The privilege he states about dying next to his compatriot is understandable, because that ending does not suffer from the slide into malaise most relationships will fall prey to. Going out on a high note might have been crystalized in pop culture by George Costanza, but Morrissey's take on the subject is far more poignant.

As I think about how many times people have disappeared in a flash, I find myself contemplating whether it was better that way, as opposed to growing weary of someone, and feeling them slip away day after day. I can't say one way or the other which is the preferable option, but nothing has quite embodied that feeling quite like "There Is A Light That Never Goes Out".

That chapter of my life is defined by the feelings stirred up by the song, and it's a real and deep connection, yet my relationship with The Smiths goes only inches further. There's a mystery in how that band could be so important, and yet so ethereal, to my story.

Maybe the light was never really there, and my eyes were playing tricks on me.