Continuing our discussion from last week concerning the role of romance (or lack thereof) in those Sunday Morning moods, we now flip genders to consider that heartbreak experience from some men’s sides. First up is Beck’s “Sunday Sun,” appearing on his critically-acclaimed 2002 album Seachange, which Beck famously recorded after the dissolution of a 9-year relationship.
That is, this wasn’t no summer fling or teenage romance that ended, but something deep and stirring–a long-standing and integral part of his core being–that had just been wrenched from his soul to die a painful death. Seachange is no ordinary break-up album, and you really gotta be in specific mood to listen to it–which, as ever, is most likely to emerge on those Sunday mornings when you’re most wondering what the heck you’re even doing with your life.
As we’ve discussed before, it’s not just the dawn of yet another new week and the inevitable self-reckoning that comes with it that sets off those Sunday moods, but the day’s very religious connotations with the Holy Sabbath (yes, even in our secular society) that can really cause one to take stock of one’s life–and “Sunday Sun” understands this. “Looking for a satellite/In the rays of heaven again” may be a cryptic lyric, but this stray allusion to the heavenly is wholly appropriate in a song about Sunday–and especially about coming to terms with a heart-wrenching breakup on a Sunday.
Heavenly light itself can be part of the pain: “The light of Christ…is in the sun, and the light of the sun, and the power thereof by which it was made” reads Doctrine and Covenants 88:7; but what we often forget is that the light of Christ, like the sun that its fuels, can likewise be as searing and terrible as it is warm and comforting. Indeed, anyone who has winced at the sun after a bad night already understands this.
For that matter, when we quote 1 John 4:16 and say that “God is love”–a love that pours down on us like the rays of the morning sun–what we sometimes elide I think is just how painful love can be, and that the phrase “God is love” can be a warning as much as a promise. C.S. Lewis famously said that to love someone is to open yourself up to the very real possibility of being hurt by them–though frankly, I think this is a case where Mr. Lewis didn’t go far enough. As everyone who’s ever been in a long-time relationship or marriage can testify, to love someone typically means you will be hurt by them–and them by you. “Sunday Sun” intuitively understands this.
Once in grad school, I had a Gender & Sexuality professor who assigned us a paper arguing that if we were all truly committed to a non-violent society, then we should all eschew monogamy, since the sheer scale of intimacy that such relationships entail are emotionally (not to mention physically) penetrative, and thus inherently violent. Therefore, in order to avoid such violence, we should all practice mass casual-hookups, the paper’s authors ultimately argued.
Such radical ideas were well within in my professor’s wheelhouse, so I was surprised when she instead said that, while she thought the authors were right, that also meant they were cowards: monogamist relationships are indeed painful–even masochistic–but that also means they are only for the courageous. (“Love is the Province of the brave,” as TV on the Radio once sang).
Yet even if you have the bravery to face that pain, still love is uniquely painful–something Kurt Cobain well understood on his Sunday morning song “Lithium,” from Nirvana’s landmark 1991 album Nevermind.
As at least a couple biographers have argued, many of the songs of Nevermind were written in response to his break-up with his first serious girlfriend Tobi Vail, a founding member of the iconic riot grrrl act Bikini Kill. (According to legend, Kurt was also friends with frontwoman Kathleen Hannah, who one night while stoned scribbled on his wall “Kurt Smells Like Teen Spirit,” in reference to a deodorant commercial–and the rest, as they say, is history).
Certainly so much of Nevermind snaps into place once one reads it as a break-up album: the way Spring holds no charms for him on “In Bloom,” the desperation for a house on “Breed,” the self-loathing on “Polly,” how he just wants everyone to “Stay Away“–and “Lithium” definitely makes much more sense as a break-up song, especially when he belts out lines like: “I miss you, I’m not gonna crack/I love you, I’m not gonna crack/I killed you, I’m not gonna crack…”
It might even be the most apropos break-up song of all on the album, since, again, it’s a Sunday song: “Sunday morning is every day, for all I care, and I’m not scared/I light candles in a haze, cause I found God…” he sings. Because again, if God is love and love is pain–remembering that the Atonement, which caused “even God, the greatest of all, to tremble because of pain, and to bleed at every pore” (D&C 19:18) was also the ultimate act of love–then to find God is not to escape the pain but to give it its fullest, most terrible expression. And as Nirvana reminds us, that sort of Sunday morning mood need not be confined to just Sunday proper, but can be felt on any day of the week.