Passing Thoughts: On Tom Petty, "Lost," and the Point of Being Alive

This week, news of the passing of Tom Petty has left me rattled, and have had a hard time figuring out why. It’s not like I was a huge fan. I didn’t start to really like his music until “Don’t Come Around Here No More” came out in 1985 (though it was an instant favorite, and it’s remained on my list ever since).

Earlier stuff like “Refugee” and “Don’t Do Me Like That” were in heavy rotation about the time I really got into listening to the radio. When those songs came on, I wouldn’t change the station. But I also didn’t obsessively scan the dial searching for them, or sit with my tape recorder at the ready, my finger and thumb poised?over the “play” and “record” buttons, hoping to catch them the instant I caught the first note.

At some point during the ’90s, my mom went to a Tom Petty concert, and I’m pretty sure she asked me if I wanted to go. I had no interest, even though he’d created more music by then that I really liked. Petty had done a lot of work with Jeff Lynne at that point (whom I completely adore), and you could hear the influence in the music, which sort of endeared him to me.

I’m not a concert person, though. The crowds; the obnoxious drunks; having to stand throughout the whole show even though you paid through the nose for a SEAT, simply because everyone else is standing and you'll miss the damned show if you sit. And getting out of the parking lot afterwards is always an ordeal. I’ve got to have a soul connection with a performer or be dying to hear them live to subject myself to oh-the-humanity on that scale.

I never saw Michael Jackson in concert either, and I liked more of his music. But when he died in 2009, I felt like I could hear the world’s collective gasp. Set aside the controversy, and we were left with the undeniable fact that someone with an amazing, unique, brilliantly creative mind who had honestly, truly changed the world—as in, he left a mark on it bigger than Meteor Crater—was suddenly gone. I remember feeling fortunate to have been alive at the same time, because I got to witness the full force of his talent; to watch it evolve in real time, albeit from afar. I still feel this way.

It was unreal to me that he was gone, and sad. But I wasn’t sad. Not like I am now.

Then there was Prince. I was in high school when Prince hit the mainstream, and I love-loved his music. I will never forget being in the locker room after gym class with my friend Carolyn when our friend Jenni excitedly ran up to us to tell us that her dad had called her from a business trip to Minneapolis to report that he’d seen Prince with his own eyes. Carolyn and I looked at each other and SCREAMED. “Oh my GOD—Jenni’s dad saw Priiiince! AAAAAHHHHHH!”

So when I was in NYC on business in 2016, sitting at a vacant table in an office at 260 Madison Avenue, and I saw the headline on my laptop stating that Prince had been found dead in an elevator, I was heartbroken.

But I didn’t cry. Not like I have this week.

When I heard that Tom Petty was gone, part of the ground beneath me fell away. Like I'm on the upper floor of a high-rise that I’ve just realized has begun to crumble around me thanks to the sudden appearance of an adult-person-sized hole in the floor, off in the corner. And I am painfully aware that the rest of it will fall away, too, piece by piece, until I am either standing on the wrong piece at the wrong time and I fall with it or, worse, I’m left all alone on the last remaining square foot of concrete and institutional-grade carpeting, sitting with my arms wrapped around my knees, waiting my turn, missing everyone I've known and loved and selfishly wishing I weren’t the one left to deal with the immense loss.

Initially, it made no sense to me that I felt this strongly about his passing, but I think I may have finally figured it out.

Whether I liked the current single or not, Tom Petty’s music has been a part of my personal soundtrack since I was in about sixth grade (for me, that was when knowing every band and every song in the top 100 became a prerequisite for acceptance among my peers). He was a fixture; a part of the world to me in a way that my parents and the LAX Theme Building and the sun had always been.

He didn’t change the world for me; he helped create it, and was an integral part of it. So how can he not be here anymore?

I know it’s only a matter of time before another hole tears through that building, that it will be a more catastrophic hit, and that it’s not far off. I'm not in mourning for Tom Petty so much as I am for the losses that are looming, and which will all hit closer to home.

Bigger and bigger holes will appear in the floor, and they'll be closer and closer to me.

___________________________

I first wrote the above about Tom Petty’s passing in 2017, and it was in writing the article that I conjured up the visual of the crumbling skyscraper. Since then, the image pops into my consciousness often; when I lost my dad in February 2019, I saw it again—this time, missing a primary support beam directly under my feet.

It’s taken a few more hits since; more people who have been a part of my life in a significant way as far back as I can remember are now gone, and more pieces of the floor I stand on have fallen away with each passing.

My visual now includes an almost-kinesthetic component—when I see it, I also can almost feel the sensation of the floor shifting and vibrating under my feet, like I’m walking on a suspension bridge. The structure is more fragile, and I have a clearer picture of just how many (few) pieces I can lose before there’s nothing left. No one but me.

It’s hard to keep moving forward with that image in my head. Before it appeared, life consisted mostly of enjoying the here and now and looking forward to whatever adventures were on the horizon. I was good at pushing fears about inevitabilities out of my consciousness for long stretches of time. Now, my skyscraper won’t disappear. Not for long. I’m rarely successful at pushing it out of my conscious thought, and when I am, it isn’t gone for long.

When the image starts to crowd out the here and now too much, there is one thing I can do to get centered again and remember the point of the journey.

I go back to Lost.

_________________________

Lost ran on ABC from 2004 to 2010, but I couldn’t bring myself to watch it then. It sounded too sci-fi and it was too over-hyped. Plus, it was a network drama, and The Sopranos and Six Feet Under had spoiled me for network television.

In 2015, I finally started watching it on Netflix to have something to keep me awake while getting ready for work in the mornings, and it wasn’t long before I was hitting it after work, too. This television show about a group of plane-crash survivors hit me like a brick in the face with an obvious and profound truth that sounds beyond corny when you put it in writing or say it out loud, but I am dead-serious about it: Lost is about us. All of us.

We—every being on this planet—are the survivors, stuck here together on this rock, in this solar system, with nothing to rely on but each other. We may fail to recognize the parallel because we didn't arrive here from somewhere else as the result of a catastrophic accident. We were born here and don’t know anything else, but that doesn't make us any less marooned or in need of companionship.

I am grateful that some intelligent people made a television show that explains to us what it means to be alive; how people can, and should, inhabit this planet together, so that we can all “get through this thing called life.”

We are more than just capable of doing it. We are wired for it. People have proven it when they find themselves in the midst of horrific and deadly events like 9/11 or the Las Vegas shooting that took place right after Petty’s death. At moments of crisis, we are forced to acknowledge the reality of why we’re all here together, and we act accordingly. We don’t think, we just respond.

We instinctively follow the Lost mantra, “Live together. Die alone.” We refuse to leave anyone behind. We will dig into rubble, run through gunfire, and re-enter the burning building to try to save just one more of “us”—a person or animal we’ve never met, but for whose wellbeing we feel nonetheless responsible.

If we would let ourselves, we would treat each other this way every day. We don’t, though, because humans don’t like to face the reality that there is only one way off this island, and that no one gets to stay here forever.

For the same reason I fight against thoughts of that damned crumbling skyscraper, you don't want to think about how important we all are to each other’s survival. If you acknowledge that, you have to acknowledge that we’re all the same, which means none of us is "special" or "better."

Some refuse to accept this truth. They want to believe they are above the rest of us by virtue of their lineage, skin tone, gender, religion, profession, or some other superficial construct.

Lost called them “the others.”

Our “others” are those among us who don’t get it. You could lob the entire Lost DVD box set at their heads and they wouldn’t get it. These are people who live by their own set of completely nonsensical, twisted notions like:

• The more money I have, the more admiration I deserve.
• Rules and laws may apply to you, but they don't apply to me.
• I am more important than anyone else.
• I must grab all the credit I can, whether or not I earned it.
• People who don’t look like me are not worth as much as I am, and I need to make sure they know it.
• It’s perfectly acceptable to cut corners as long as no one finds out. When accused, I deny. In the face of proof, I deflect.
• Cheating and stealing are acceptable ways to get what you want.
• If you are different from me, you are a threat.
• If you have knowledge I don't have, you are a threat.

The list is infinitely long, because there is an infinite number of ridiculous ideas people have about what makes life worth living, why we exist, and why we all wound up on this particular heavily populated planet together, as opposed to all of us living on our own individual planets where we couldn’t annoy the bejesus out of each other.

We are here together on this celestial island for one reason: To help each other get through it. The only way to actually make life better for ourselves is by working together to make it better for everyone. At times, we need to make individual sacrifices for the greater good. We do it because it is the right thing to do, and ultimately, it lifts us all.

Plus, doing the right thing just feels good.

Some of us help each other by teaching, leading, mentoring, or counseling. Some help by organizing, planning, or inventing. Others, by nurturing, protecting, being kind.

A lot of people help by giving what they are best equipped to give by virtue of their talents. They create things so profoundly beautiful that they move us to tears, or make us laugh when laughter is the only thing that can save us.

Some are actually able to share pieces of their souls with us. Their work is like a beacon, drawing similar souls toward it who instantly recognize in them a kindred spirit—one able to express something we were dying to communicate, but didn’t know how to, or didn’t think anyone else could understand. They make us feel real, seen; that our ideas and feelings are valid. That we are not alone.

Just as there is no way to adequately thank someone who has given you this kind of gift, there are no words to describe what it feels like when that person vanishes from existence. It is painful, and surreal.

There is one particular Tom Petty song that, to me, is a love song to those of us who “get it.” It’s done a damned good job of inspiring me more times than I can count by reminding me that, for whatever length of time I am here, I don’t have to play by anyone else’s nonsensical rules. That I have power, and that it’s worth holding onto with everything I’ve got. I will never be able to thank him for writing it, or express to him what it’s meant to me.

The best I can do is to share it with you, my remaining fellow island cohabitants. Because although I know you’ve heard the words, most of us can’t hear them often enough:

“Well, I know what’s right

I got just one life

In a world that keeps on pushin’ me around

But I’ll stand my ground

And I won’t back down.”