B.B. King - The Thrill is Gone

Am I close to the end with this Substack thing? Or is this a new beginning?

Can’t Buy A Thrill

I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but I haven’t written any original essays for Earworms & Song Loops in more than a month.

I’ve been creatively parched for some time and haven’t dealt with it well. At some point, writing had flipped from something that gives me a thrill to something that gives me angina.

I’d been dipping into the archives and reposting more often than I would like these past few months as a way to ride out the wave of blahs, hoping that I’d soon catch a gnarly tube, jump up on my surfboard, wow the onlookers with my derring-do and be back in the flow.

But that hasn’t happened. I’ve been fighting this gnawing combination of frustration, apathy, and doubt for several weeks, trying to force it into submission.

I’d written a half-dozen half-drafts of essays that went nowhere and only fed my belief that it was time to hang up the saddle, time to snuff out the torch, time to pack my knives and go.

And then, perhaps born out of mental fatigue, I stopped fighting.

To quote the great Kevin Cronin of REO Speedwagon fame:

I can't fight this feeling any longer
And yet I'm still afraid to let it flow

Yes, all my emotions and turmoil can be best summed up in cheesy ballads from the ‘80s. It’s a blessing and a curse.

It’s less like I’ve given up and more like I’ve given in.

I decided that whatever phase I was in was okay. Not knowing what ”this” is — a pause, a break, an ending, a new beginning — didn’t have to be a huge stressor.

As the Buddhist teachings often say, everything is impermanent.

Because I’m far from enlightened and struggle with self-doubt, imposter syndrome, and a hyper-active comparing mind, taking a more chilled, go-with-the-flow approach flies against decades of ingrained mental gymnastics.

Is the thrill gone? And if so, is it gone gone? Or temporarily gone? Maybe the thrill is simply missing. Perhaps it’s taking a sabbatical. I imagine it driving cross-country in an attempt to “find itself.”

The thrill is out looking for a thrill.

I’m not expecting magic. I know writing this Substack is like a long-term relationship. The honeymoon stage turns into a cozy familiarity, then morphs into boredom, eventually requiring honest effort to develop a new level of intimacy, only for life and all its myriad sufferings and struggles to stretch you thin and apart like taffy, and goddamn, is it always going to be this exhausting?

Photo by brut carniollus on Unsplash

Is the Thrill Gone?

For the past two-plus years, Earworms and Song Loops has been a constant (re)source of joy and expression. I wrote original essays every week for over 100 weeks in a row. I did it through family emergencies, bouts of heavy anxiety, and super-swamped work weeks.

My intellectual brain can see this and be proud and give myself a little credit. But to quote another classic song from the ‘80s, a louder voice keeps asking me:

What have you done for me lately?

Hell Bent for Leather and Lace

I have had dozens of earworms filling my brain despite this bout of whatever I’m struggling with — writer’s block, depression, apathy. The well hasn’t been dry; it’s more like the tap has been clogged. I’ve needed Drano or one of those curvy metal rods shoved up my ass to clear out the muck.

I must mention one of my recent earworms because it’s still stuck in my head and making me crazy.

I searched YouTube to find the original version of “Leather and Lace” and got distracted by a particularly hilarious cover version of the song. It immediately put me in a better mood. Will Ferrell and Dave Grohl (of Nirvana and Foo Fighters) have pulled me out of a funk more times than I can count.

Why did this classic Stevie Nicks and Don Henley duet become an earworm? There has to be a reason, right?

I recently leased a new car that came with three months of free SiriusXM satellite radio. I have no need to pay for such a service—I’m perfectly happy with podcasts and Spotify—but I’ve been playing around with the various channels for the past two weeks. There are a half-dozen classic rock stations; my best guess is that this song played on one of them.

It’s a lovely song, Don’s voice blends nicely with Stevie’s, but it’s hardly a favorite. Is it particularly catchy?

Maybe a little, but not like the stickiest of Nicks’ tunes. Not like “Gypsy,” or “Stand Back.” So why have the words: “Lovers forever, face to face / My city, your mountains / Stay with me, stay / I need you to love me / I need you today / Give to me your leather / Take from me my lace” gotten stuck in my head?

Is my Substack newsletter singing the Stevie Nicks part to me? Asking me to give it my leather and take from it its lace? Is it trying to develop a new level of intimacy?

I do have an old leather jacket in the closet that is too small and outdated to wear. I’ll try draping it over the back of my iMac like a greaser from the ‘50s when I write my next post and see what happens.

The Thrill of it All

What I tend to forget over and over, what I have to be reminded of constantly, is how when you open yourself up, signs of synchronicity appear all around.

While struggling to finish this post, I took a short break to watch some tennis. When I turned on the TV, it happened to be tuned to a classic movie channel from the last time it was on. The movie that was just beginning to play? The Thrill of it All.

I had never heard of this 1963 comedy starring Doris Day and James Garner and directed by Norman Jewison.

Somehow, I ended up watching the whole movie instead of tennis.

I won’t go into the film's plot — you can probably stream it somewhere if you are a Doris Day, James Garner, or Norman Jewison completist. It’s quite dated in many aspects, yet sweetly odd, charming, and edgy. But that’s not the point. The point is the title.

I’d been fretting over whether The Thrill is Gone when The Thrill of it All was literally in front of my eyes.

I know this post’s song was B.B. King’s “The Thrill is Gone,” but it’s such a classic that I found myself with nothing new to say about it that hasn’t been said a million times. So instead of copying info from Wikipedia, I will leave you with this amazing live rendition of the tune (originally written by Rick Darnell and Roy Hawkins in 1951).

• Do you have a story of serendipity? Where something in the outer world hits you like a brick and shakes you out of your doldrums?

• How do you maintain your “thrill?”

• Thanks for sticking through this purging. For those of you new to Earworms and Song Loops, using music and bits of song to explore my inner workings is what I do.

• But I also write less personal posts, like my Number Song playlists. Of which #5 (Five) is coming next! Get ready to discover which songs I have to share and which ones I left out.