Escaping Neverland

The Smashing Pumpkins, Vic Chesnutt, and J.M. Barrie

I woke up with a strange feeling today, a feeling that I couldn’t quite place. It’s been with me for the last few days, actually. What brought it on is uncertain, and hardly matters. What matters is that the feeling got me thinking—thinking about scars from the past, about what makes people do bad things. About whether people can really change. There’s a brilliant Smashing Pumpkins lyric:

“There are no enemies, only dangerous friends.”

The statement is presented as a piece of wisdom passed on from father to son, and it is powerful. I was so trusting when I was younger. A scared young girl, but scared of the wrong things, out in the real world for the first time with no clue where I was going, what I wanted. What could go wrong? I did not know how badly I could be harmed, or how permanently. I did not know that the villains of our stories are not always cackling wraiths dressed in black, with sharp claws and obvious intentions. I did not know that they often wear smiles, claim to care about you, perhaps actually do, and that their deadliest weapons are lies, perhaps poisons, but rarely guns or blades. I did not know that there are no “good” or “bad” people, that when people do bad things their intentions are seldom evil, usually just desperate or scared, or at worst angry or jealous. That we are all made out of the same stuff, and ultimately, become the same stuff in the end. That those “dangerous friends” are fallen angels, people who could have been good but made the wrong decisions, consistently make these decisions, despite half-heartedly wishing for a better way. Perhaps they consider you a friend, too, do not realize the extent of the harm they may be inflicting. I am not minimizing the wickedness that they are able to achieve. Lucifer was a fallen angel. In fact, it makes their fate even scarier. They are human, just like you. They look like everyone else. They are like everyone else. It’s easier to dismiss people who do bad things as “evil,” corrupted from the start. This means that they are separate from us. But they are not. If you’ve done bad, and if you’ve exited the state of denial that follows such an act, then you understand this. I did not understand, when I was young and naive. Did not understand that villains are often friendly, sometimes kind, with a past, a personality, and dreams. They usually feel bad after they hurt you, although this guilt often just warps them further. And the remorseless among them are the ones who have experienced the worst pain of all.

“There are no enemies, only dangerous friends.” A statement that passes by unnoticed to a listener who has not learned this for themself. It just sounds like words—there is no power in the statement unless it has already been realized. But then what’s the point of communicating at all? A tragedy, one of the most devastating tragedies of this melancholy song. A parent may try to protect their child, do right by them, but ultimately, learning must be done alone. There is a line from Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha:

“Wisdom is not communicable. The wisdom which a wise man tries to communicate always sounds foolish.”

Ah. The folly of every young person’s existence, the first time they are faced with the consequence of some action that a parent or mentor tried to warn them against—the pesky truth that we must all make our own mistakes. Isn’t this the plight of every parent, to try to prevent their children from making the same mistakes that they made? To try to teach them, shelter them from the worst of this world, when the world itself is the only effective teacher? In Siddhartha, the titular character rejects all teachers, relies on the world itself and his own intuition to guide him. Yet the hardest challenge he faces is letting go of his son so that he may do the same. It’s like we’re stuck in an endless loop, falling and learning and branching out, creating new people to fall and learn all over again. Perhaps this is how the earth breathes, each new life a hopeful gasp in, each evolved soul a contented sigh. Perhaps these learning experiences are the reason we are here. If so, what’s the point of this if you can take shortcuts, if it comes easy?

It’s like we’re stuck in an endless loop, falling and learning and branching out, creating new people to fall and learn all over again.

Billy Corgan is a fan of Siddhartha. He performed an eight-hour interpretation of the novel in 2014, which I have admittedly not seen. I’m unsure if he had read the book before writing this song, but it certainly seems like it. That is the thing with works of art that express fundamental truths—they tend to resemble one another. The song is named “Methusela,” after the oldest man in the Bible, who lived a whopping 969 years, and about whom I know nothing except that his father, Enoch, has a whole (apocryphal) Bible book named after him. Age implies wisdom, at least allegedly, which is fitting, as this song is one of the wisest I have ever heard. Billy Corgan, however, was only twenty-eight when he wrote the song, illustrating one of its main points: that sometimes age and wisdom are unrelated. The song details a relationship between a father and son, in which they both display moments of wisdom, moments of foolishness, but in which, they come to realize, they often act as mirror images of one another.

The first time I heard the song, a couple years ago now, it brought me to tears. I had been butting heads with my mom for a while, and at the moment I was very upset about something that I can’t quite remember. Anyway, the lyrics of the song tapped into something deep within me, and I thought about her, who she really was, how similar we are to one another, and how often that amplified our disagreements. I thought about how, whenever I’d been the most ashamed of something, the most fearful of her opinion, she always responded with the greatest warmth and understanding. She knows life is messy and imperfect, she’s slayed her own dragons. In my youth I imagined my parents as these static, authoritarian figures, not understanding that they had been young once, that they understood my foolishness, and that their firm demeanor was their futile but necessary attempt at protecting me from it. I thought about my father, a person doing his best, just like everyone else in this world. How hard he’s tried, how difficult I’ve made it for him. He’s made mistakes. Who hasn’t? I thought about the fallen angels I’ve met, children inside, destructive and pitiful, clinging desperately at anything that might temporarily make them feel better.

“Father never quite grew up

He just grew old.”

Another profound truth, one that I did not understand when I was eighteen and stupid, cursing the fates for my unhappiness instead of looking within, willing and ready to forfeit my life before it even began, without a clue of what exactly I’d be giving up. I did not realize that the amount of time you spend on this Earth does not dictate how mature you are, that there is no switch to flip that makes you suddenly a grown-up. Did not realize that it is possible to dull your senses, medicate yourself into oblivion, until before you know it you’re old, with a malfunctioning body and a mind whose growth was stunted sometime around the age of fourteen. I did not realize that there are certain decisions that change a person forever, certain amounts of shame that can never be purged from you completely. Did not realize how damaging the birth of a child can be to an immature man, how usually, when fathers abandon their children, it comes not from malice but from the most pathetic form of cowardice imaginable, a cowardice that they often learned from their own fathers. I did not consider that a man’s life does not end when such an act is committed, that after ties are severed, he goes into hiding for the rest of his life, disappearing into the comforts of a bottle, a pipe, an impressionable young girl. It is not a coincidence how many estranged fathers die young. Yes, many of them were addicts already, but the act of leaving a family behind is so heinous, so appalling to the conscience, that it ensures compulsive oblivion for as long as the estrangement lasts, lest their own guilt kill them before their addictions get the chance. I did not realize, when I was nineteen and stupid, that it is easy for a person who has already done this to go on hurting people, once this gravest sin has already been committed. I did not realize, while focused on what could have been better, how lucky I was that my own father was a strong man, one who always wanted to be a part of my life, even when his life was at its worst. It pains me now, thinking about the extent to which I can still take this for granted. I thought about my love for them. About how love often manifests itself as fear of loss. About how uncomfortable this can feel, how tempting it can be to withdraw emotionally.

I did not realize that the amount of time you spend on this Earth does not dictate how mature you are, that there is no switch to flip that makes you suddenly a grown-up.

Learning to love is a late and vital step of growing up. Children do not know how to love, except selfishly. They may use the word, think they know what it means, but their love naturally revolves around themselves, what the person means to them. Empathy, regard for the person’s well-being for their own sake—these things haven’t developed yet, because children are naturally self-centered. It is the retention of this childlike selfishness that likely creates a “fallen angel.” There’s a song called “Sad Peter Pan,” written by Vic Chesnutt. The song title itself is enough to arouse strong feelings within me, images of a person who refuses to grow up and who suffers because of it, burrowing further into shame, depression, sin. Their childish state has become stale—they’ve experienced it all already, what they need next is to grow—but they don’t know how. It’s a state of being that I relate to, when I’m feeling my worst.

“When did I get perverted

And my innocent eyes diverted

From the view so grand

Imbued with distractions.”

Isn’t this the truth? These words can speak to any of the “sad Peter Pans” out there, avoiding responsibility, dulling or altering reality, desperately clinging to a stage of their life that is permanently gone. A person stuck in a worldview which revolves around them, which turns into emptiness after you get to a certain age, once you’re meant to experience deep, real love. A person who’s seen too much and accepts too little, a person terrified to mature, but who has nonetheless outgrown the privileges of youth, lost the innocent wonder that makes every day an adventure, every experience a pleasure. Someone lacking both the confidence and sure-mindedness of an adult and the wide-eyed, fascinated eagerness of a child. A hermit crab who has grown out of his shell but refuses to move into a bigger one, because what if it’s uncomfortable? There is no comfortable place for such a person. The only way out of the elements is to grow up, and growing hurts. It does not help that “sad Peter Pans” usually become the way that they are due to a pathological avoidance of the unknown, of change.

“I’m a reluctant rebel”

Aren’t we all? Wanderers, rejecting the norms of the world for no other reason than that it’s all we know how to do. Perhaps a “normal” life might suit us better. But we’re not “normal” people. We’re weird. Different. We wouldn’t be accepted by the nine-to-fivers of the world—that’s been proven by experience. We wouldn’t be accepted by anybody, if they knew who we really were. We wouldn’t like it, anyway. It’s too stuffy. Too morose, day after day of the same. Better to stick to the evil you know, to the uncomfortable yet unthreatening hole that you’ve dug for yourself. At least you’ve grown accustomed to the aches that it causes you, curled up too small, the unforgiving ground damaging your back.

The Smashing Pumpkins covered “Sad Peter Pan.” In their cover, they only added one lyric, the three words: “and you’re lying.” I wonder if they realized the depth of this statement, or the wisdom. A “sad Peter Pan” is a pathological liar. We may convince ourselves that we can run from reality, forever buried in our comfort zone, but we cannot. It’s unsustainable to live in a hole, a hollowed out tree underneath the ground, all by ourselves. We don’t have to live the way that everyone else lives, don’t have to conform, per se, but we have to mature, fend for ourselves, think past tomorrow. People who refuse to do this end up depressed or addicted, because we need challenge, need autonomy. There is simply no pleasure in stagnation. We need love—that real, adult type of love that’s scary, that sometimes hurts more than children can bear, but that nonetheless makes life worth living. The type of love illustrated in “Methusela.”

A “sad Peter Pan” is a pathological liar.

The “real” Peter Pan is quite sad, also. In the novel Peter and Wendy (which tells the famous Peter Pan story that we are all familiar with but is surprisingly not the original version of the story—this honor would go to the 1904 play of the same name), J.M. Barrie refers to Peter Pan explicitly as a “tragic boy.” Abandoned by his mother when he was a young child, the boy never grows, never changes. His memory is pitifully short, he makes no lasting connections. He’s forever searching for a mother figure to watch out for him, and this “mother” always grows up, always moves on, because his magical world of Neverland is only accessible to children. He is saddened at the loss of his companions, but to keep them would mean growing up himself, which he is unwilling to do. He tries to appear happy about this, but it seems that he is repressing a great deal of pain:

“Sometimes, though not often, he had dreams, and they were more painful than the dreams of other boys. For hours he could not be separated from these dreams, though he wailed piteously in them. They had to do, I think, with the riddle of his existence.”

A tortured soul in denial, not as rosy an image as the happy-go-lucky child of a Disney cartoon. Captain Hook, our villain, is a tragic figure as well, an adult permanently trapped in a child’s Neverland, trying to outrun a beast wielding a ticking clock, knowing that when the clock stops, it will mean his demise. He sounds a lot like a “sad Peter Pan” himself, Captain of an unhappy crew in an imaginary world, constantly evading death but never forgetting its imminence. It is significant that at the end of the story Peter Pan slays Hook and becomes Captain of his ship—taking his place, assuming his tortured existence. He may remain a child in appearance and in demeanor, but the clock catches up to us all, in one way or another. The character’s darker side makes this very evident.

Vic Chesnutt’s song, despite its sorrowful title, is a bit more optimistic than this original Peter Pan story, with its tortured character who will presumably be stuck in his juvenile state forever. Consider the closing lyrics:

“You touched me and then you ran

And left some sad Peter Pan

All alone and awkward

But a transformation, I swear it will occur.”

I don’t know who hurt Vic Chesnutt. What I know is that it is easy, after experiencing extreme pain, extreme shame, to retreat into yourself, to go into hiding forever. It is no coincidence that the abused often resemble their abusers. The abusers are cowards, witless Captain Hooks envious of the youth they’ve lost and terrified of their future fate. Their power came from their victims’ perceived worthlessness, and what is “Peter Pan syndrome” if not a lack of confidence in one’s ability to be an adult? In the song Vic declares himself a “sad Peter Pan,” we feel for him. Then we get to the song’s happy ending: “A transformation, I swear it will occur.” A word of hope, a declaration that there is some kind of way out of this tortured state.

I don’t know if there was, for Vic. He killed himself. Due to his medical bills, supposedly. Bullshit. A person who wants to live fights for his life kicking and screaming until the very end. A resigned soul attempts suicide multiple times, ebbing and flowing between hope and hopelessness until a suicide attempt finally takes. Vic never made peace with his dark side, never stood strong through his shame. His penultimate album At the Cut gives us a detailed look into the state of his psyche in the time leading up to his death. The song “Flirted With You All My Life” details his love-hate relationship with suicide. He declares in the song that he’s not ready for death—heartbreaking, considering that he died by his own hand on Christmas Day of the same year. What changed? Did he truly believe that he wanted to live, and then change his mind somewhere along the way? If so, for how long? Consider these lyrics from climax of his song “It Is What It Is.” Better yet, listen to the song. Or the whole album. It is a masterpiece.

I’m teetering on the brink

Of an all-out breakthrough.

Sometimes clear-headed

Sometimes a doofus

Sometimes very cordial

And sometimes aloof.

I am syrupy optimistic one moment

Then gravely pessimistic the next.

Irritable as a hornet sometimes

Then agreeable as it gets.

So much to unpack here. What is the breakthrough he is on the brink of? The same transformation he spoke of in “Sad Peter Pan,” over a decade before? And those mood swings—the words hit me right in the chest. I get it. I’m like that, too. But it’s the mark of an unstable mind, a childish mind, and in an adult, one that’s preserving a disconnect with reality. In the story of Peter Pan, this is the personality of Tinker Bell, the fairy, the symbol of all that is childish and free, but also volatile and potentially dangerous. She feels so deeply, but she can only feel one emotion at a time, like a toddler having a tantrum. There is no nuance, no control. It is no way for an adult to live. Could this song, written over a decade after “Sad Peter Pan,” be illustrating Vic in that same juvenile state, a state which he ultimately could not survive?

I used to have some sort of fascination with musicians who took their own lives, back when I undervalued mine. I found something beautiful in their pain. Their tortured art struck something within me. And there was something beautiful in it. I don’t know what I would have done, some days, if I had not been able to listen to the music of people who felt as badly as I did. Now, though, thinking about these artists just makes me sad. So much talent, so much potential, just wasted. What a horrific message to send. When I listen to sad music, I want to feel solidarity, to be comforted in the knowledge that I am not alone, that everything will be okay. It stains the message, somewhat, to learn that the artist took the coward’s way out. It makes the plight seem hopeless. I want to feel power over my sadness, not to feel like surrender is its inevitable end.

In many ways, Vic Chesnutt is an inspiration. Rendered a quadriplegic after a drunk-driving accident when he was a teenager, he became a professional musician against all odds, and wrote some of the most beautiful music I have ever heard. What a lesson in not letting life get you down. He could’ve died in that accident, but he kept on living, went on to do something amazing. But that ending! Heartbreaking. I adore Vic’s music—it bears an emotional power I have not found anywhere else. The sounds he experiments with on albums like “At the Cut” are edgy and completely original, and even when his music is at its simplest, it still feels, as a listener, like he is right there next to you, soul bare. He is a unique artist, unlike any other. I do not want to condemn or trash him. His choice was his own, but I still wish he had chosen differently, wish he had made peace with the demons in his head, for despite all of the emotion channeled in his music, he is lacking the effortless wisdom of a songwriter like Billy Corgan, someone who escaped Neverland. Someone who will empathize with you, but more importantly, will show you how to grow. His emotional range is wider. He writes about his dark side, but he is not afraid of the light. The suicidal artists of the world could learn something from this.

I’ll always be a sucker for a sad story. But I will not make the same mistake.