Landslide

In 1974, Stevie Nicks wrote her enduring and now iconic song, Landslide. In it she reflects on the challenges of change in one’s life and imaginatively uses the various images and seismic shifts in nature to relate her thoughts and feelings.

I took my love, I took it down
Climbed a mountain and I turned around
And I saw my reflection in the snow covered hills
‘Til the landslide brought me down…

Like many creative artists, Nicks was using her talent to express what was, for her, the inexpressible at that moment. She and her boyfriend, guitarist Lindsey Buckingham, had little money and, despite some limited success and encouragement, she wondered whether to continue with her relationship and musical career or, instead, simply leave both and, well, go back to school.

Oh, mirror in the sky, what is love?
Can the child within my heart rise above?
Can I sail through the changin’ ocean tides?
Can I handle the seasons of my life?
Mmm, I don’t know….

Is this just a Stevie Nicks appreciation blog? #maybe #whynot

Little did she know that the following year she would become a part of Fleetwood Mac and the band would explode with a string of hit singles and albums that would earn them worldwide fame, fortune and eventually even a spot in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.

@420doggface208
♬ Dreams (2004 Remaster) – Fleetwood Mac

And 40 years later a viral TikTok video

Not to mention, many of their greatest hits would be written by Nicks herself and that she would go on to have her own hugely successful solo career. And that she and her great love affair with Buckingham would indeed end. And that she and this world famous band would break up, reunite, then break up and reunite, and break up again until even their worldwide fans lost count.

I’ve been thinking a lot about Landslide lately as I’ve spent my days being haunted by the prospect of democracy enduring and the hope (yet fear) of an electoral landslide.

I swear this hasn’t been me for the past month #promise

Moreover, I’ve been petrified by the thought of our country’s ability to withstand either and move on even semi-intact.

Well, I’ve been ‘fraid of changin’
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Children get older
And I’m gettin’ older, too

Strangely, it is at this point in the song where there is a long, poignant musical interlude where no words are spoken and we are all, indeed, meant to feel, think and reflect. So it seems appropriate at this moment to consider the crystal clear shift of Americans as we fully take in the results of the 2020 U.S. Presidential Election vs. where we stood four years ago.

2020 Electoral College (270 needed to win):

Joseph R. Biden: 306
Donald J. Trump: 232

2020 Popular Vote (and still counting):

Joseph R. Biden: 78,686,795
Donald J. Trump: 73,102,757

I’m not gloating I swear #OKmaybealittle #itsearned #WOO

2016 Electoral College Results (270 needed to win):

Donald J. Trump: 306
Hillary Clinton: 232

2016 Popular Vote Results (final tally):

Hillary Clinton: 65,853,625
Donald J. Trump: 62,985,106

Geologically a landslide is the sliding down of a mass of earth or rock from a mountain or cliff. But society, being what it is, long ago appropriated that word for its politics. As a group we freely, and universally, now consider landslide to mean an overwhelming majority of votes for one party in an election.

Certainly we don’t want to get further down into the weeds at what constitutes overwhelming since we now occupy an American space where we find ourselves fist-fighting (and worse) in the public square over whether it should be a moral, and perhaps legal, requirement to wear a mask when coming within six feet of others during our current global, and airborne, viral pandemic.

Note: COVID-19 has so far killed over 1.3 million people worldwide and murders close to1500 Americans daily. Total infections are 53.8 million to date, 10.9 million (almost 20%) of which are in the U.S.

So to be fair, let’s bend over backwards and use the measure of our outgoing POTUS. The guy who tweeted right after his Nov. 2016 win, and restated publicly, privately and throughout the world various iterations of these same thoughts about what constitutes overwhelming and thus, landslides, via his many surrogates over the last four years, in proclamations such as this:

“In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide . . .”
— Donald Trump, in a tweet, Nov. 27, 2016

“CNN is so embarrassed by their total support of Hillary Clinton and her loss in a landslide, that they don’t know what to do.”
— Donald Trump, in a tweet, Nov. 28, 2016

And —

306. Landslide. Blowout. Historic. https://t.co/ObYZDo8cBq
— Kellyanne Conway (@KellyannePolls) November 28, 2016

Me, not having to think about Kellyanne ever again

With 306 established as the legitimate mark of victory and DEFEAT, now might be a good time to remind everyone, especially those who this year LOST, that with the above musical interlude over this is the point in the song where the prior verse again repeats, and by doing so asks us ALL to once again truly rethink, and reflect, on all of our very human natures:

Well, I’ve been ‘fraid of changin’
‘Cause I’ve built my life around you
But time makes you bolder
Even children get older
and I’m gettin’ older, too
I’m gettin’ older, too

What? My birthday is this week? No we’re skipping 2020

Now as a writer, I will admit that I am prone to attach superhuman power to the words the best of my fellow writers put together, whether in prose or dialogue, comedy or drama, or anything in between.

But after the last four years I gotta hand it to Steve Nicks for decades later giving us a way to move forward, individually and en masse, when our backs are pressed against the wall.

That’s why this weekend, and hopefully from now on, I take a lot of comfort from her concluding verse. Rather than a shift in weather patterns or a deadly collapsing of the universe as I knew it, it finally offered me massive glimmers of light through the resounding power of reinvention:

So take this love, take it down

If you climb a mountain and turn around
And if you see my reflection in the snow covered hills
Well, the landslide will bring it down
And if you see my reflection in the SNO-O-O-O-WWWW covered hills
Well, the landslide will bring it down
Oh, the landslide will bring it down

Listen, none of this is ever without risk. But when you get a chance to level what wasn’t working away and leave behind an avalanche of tweets, it’s hard not to celebrate the sight of a newly imagined playing field and all the potential it offers moving forward.

Fleetwood Mac – “Landslide”

10.25.20

by notesfromachair

Les Miz, Sean Penn, and 33 years of love

Chair, here. Quick story –

It was 33 years ago this weekend that my husband and I had our first “date.” Well, actually it didn’t start out that way.

I was taking him to a party because a mutual friend of ours in NY told me there was this guy he went to school with who’d just moved to LA to get his PhD in film.

And he didn’t know many people and he thought we had similar sensibilities.

He emphasized this wasn’t a fix-up, more just a way to show this guy around and introduce him to some friends.

That was fine because it’d been more than a year since I extricated myself from a very troubled relationship and had finally decided I was done with dating, commitment phobic men and, um, men in general.

Anyway, my husband rang my doorbell while I was blasting the Les Miserables soundtrack and about to dump the garbage. When I opened it I remember here was this cute guy in a vintage vest and, well, since I wasn’t dating it really didn’t matter.

Sorry Colm, but you should really hear my “Bring Him Home”

I wasn’t embarrassed in the least. In fact, I just told him to hold on while I dumped the garbage.

Unbeknownst to me, he loved Les Miz and somehow found my behavior rather charming.

Then, we went to the party.

There were lots of gay men there and I had in advance told the friend of mine who was having this shindig that I was bringing someone new to town that wanted to meet people. Well, this particular friend took me very seriously and at some point introduced him to a blonde guy his boyfriend knew who worked at a bank, thinking it would be a match.

It was then that I began to get….jealous?

But how could that be? Just because this guy from NY and I were having some fun conversations on the way to this party, following a long talk on the phone a few nights before?

Oh, whatever. And who really cares if he is now taking to this blonde guy who works at a bank. I have loads of good conversations with lots of people. I’m known for giving good conversation.

In any event, time went by and I mingled with others. But at various points I kept spying the guy I brought talking on and off to this blonde guy, who truly wasn’t all that good-looking, especially if you didn’t go in for that type.

In fact, I couldn’t imagine who would. Not that I really cared.

But suddenly the group I was talking to was disbanding and I turned and suddenly saw the NY guy I had brought, sort of looking in my general direction. So I figured this was a cue for me to go over and, well….rescue him???

I did and by that time his group was also dispersing, and that blonde banker (?) along with it. We talked for a bit, a few people left and somehow this NY guy who could never in a million years be my husband, and I, decided to clear out a bit early. He looked a bit awkward and bored at that point anyway, and, well, I didn’t want him to feel that way.

It was Saturday night so we decided to take a walk in the only neighborhood in L.A. two gay guys would even think would be fun to walk around in at that time – West Hollywood.

Cue my Grinchy heart growing three times

At which point, I proceeded to answer some of his questions and tell him a bit about myself, what I did and, well…who knows what else. It was easy to open up to him and I kept thinking, wow, he’s a good listener and I guess he finds this interesting and funny because why else would he keep asking me to keep going and occasionally laugh at my self-deprecating humor?

Of course, he remembers this as mostly a long monologue about a screenplay I was writing at the time that, though he didn’t find uninteresting, seemed beside the point of why we were walking.

When somehow the walk ended and I drove him back to his small apartment downtown on the USC campus he asked me if I wanted to come upstairs. Sean Penn, who was then married to Madonna and in the tabloids every other day for punching out paparazzi, was hosting Saturday Night Live that night, and well, for those who weren’t around then, just know this was a potential HUGE event because, well, ANYTHING could happen.

What I learned from that night is that at ANY moment in time ANYTHING can and WILL happen. And often when you least expect it.

Thirty-three years later it might seem a little sad that we are this weekend limited in what we can do for our anniversary in light of the pandemic. But wouldn’t you know that the gay gods in the universe have provided once again.

They scheduled the fabulous Adele to make her hosting debut on Saturday Night Live where she will step back into the international spotlight for the first time in a long while after a huge weight loss – wearing designer clothes and, no doubt, hawking a bit of her about to be released latest album.

Life is often perfectly flawed but, let’s face it, sometimes it can be flawlessly perfect.

And, almost always, at a time when you least expect it.

One Day More – Cast of Les Miserables

notes from a chair

Category Archives: Just Sayin’

Landslide

Les Miz, Sean Penn, and 33 years of love