A eulogy for an Optima; Or, an ode to sad music
Been thinking a lot about my affinity for listening to music in cars, and why more often than not, the songs are sad. This essay is somewhat scattered. So is the grille of my Kia Optima on the 35W.
I can still smell Ryan Foster’s breakfast sandwich.
I was 13 years old then, nestled into the backseat of a Chrysler, or an Acura, or a Ford pickup truck, whatever chrome-colored commuter my Dad was driving that year. He changes cars often, in search of a better bargain. Now retired, my Dad still rocks both Walmart cargo shorts and an economical-yet-fresh sports car. Every car he bought was used enough to be discounted; new enough to still smell staunchly of fresh leather and faded cardboard trees.
But the only smell stronger than White Ice was that breakfast sandwich. Ryan was a teammate of mine on the middle school basketball team, a B-squad that I wasn’t nearly skilled enough to start on.
Back then, our practices were scheduled every morning at 6 a.m., and the parents of a few neighborhood kids on the team rotated carpool duties. It’s funny now, looking back, that I’m certain the workload was an even split between parents, but I can’t seem to remember a single ride with a teammate’s parent. I do, however, remember the days my dad drove. And I can still feel the aroma of that damn breakfast sandwich, and the way it collided so viciously and warmly with New Car Smell.
I was more of an Eggo guy, myself, prone to housing a troubling caloric amount of processed sugar before running sprints on a junior high hardwood a half hour later. Ryan went on to play varsity hoops for two years; I did not. Lesson learned.
An aside: Like many once-familiar faces from Moapa Valley, I haven’t seen Ryan Foster in at least six years. I hope he’s alright.
The sun was never awake when the carpool route started or finished. It was pitch black on those drives. I watched LED headlights scan the desolate beige landscape on the 15-minute drive across the town, worriless and optimistic. Maybe I’d make a good impression that day at practice.
But the sky felt darker when my dad drove. He played the same albums every single morning — Middle Brother’s self-titled 2011 record and Deer Tick’s Born on Flag Day. Much to my chagrin. Sure, there were a few bluesy bangers, but my dad clung to the ballads. “Smith Hill” and “Daydreaming” are the most tangible as I reminisce a decade later. They’re also my favorites. More on that later.
Then, I hated that gutwrenching whine. That soily twang. If I possessed the pure audacity to put on headphones in the passenger seat, I would have muted every single alt-country minute played in the car that basketball season. At 13, I’d have loved to drown the dreary acoustic Deer Tick dread out with pseudo-inspirational mid-2010s pop rap. Give me Macklemore or give me death, I thought.
Why should I feel this sad at 5 a.m.? Minutes after eating peanut butter waffles (and minutes before a self-inflicted zone defense disasterclass), all I wanted was some dopamine from the DJ in the driver’s seat.
But instead I got John McCauley.
Both of those records are now in my own vinyl collection. I fucking love Deer Tick.
It was seven years before I revisited Born On Flag Day. In the winter of 2021, I gave it a shot, hearing those songs as a humbler version of the tween that sat in those leather seats. I listened to verses that once clashed thematically with my jubilant, naive adolescence. But there I was, a 20-year-old music-obsessed melodramatic feeling jagged, and getting jabbed by each of McCauley’s lyrics.
On “Little White Lies,” he sings of regret, guilt and isolation.
So please, let me be lonely tonight
For how many times I thought this was the life
But I'm not so sure I even am alive
I knew those feelings too well. Let me be clear on two things — 1) Born On Flag Day is not entirely sad. That would be a reductive summary of an outstanding record, but the saddest songs are the ones that resonated. That’s the point. And 2) this was not my first rodeo with sad music. That year, I was already on a bender of Bright Eyes and Bridgers and Bon Iver and Bob Dylan. But it was certainly my first battle with musical revisionism. How could something that sounded so visceral as a kid sound so freeing as an adult? What changed? Am I alright?
Well, the setting certainly helped. I listened, sitting in the grass at Hance Park, a spot in downtown Phoenix, which was a place I was just learning to call home. I journaled that day — here’s an excerpt:
The sun set, and I noticed a large variety of people in the park around me. It’s amazing to just watch the world pass. A couple next to me laughed uncontrollably to a TikTok with Waka Flocka Flame’s “No Hands,” letting it replay over and over again, twisting into their picnic blanket with joy. A small boy walked by and carried such curious innocence in his eyes. A dog barked at a stranger, who wasn’t disturbed but certainly wasn’t amused, either. Life can be brilliant if you stop and listen. I even took my headphones out for once.
How was it possible that a song as scathing as “Song About A Man” could bring me the same serenity that a Drumma Boy-produced club slapper brought the couple nearby? I was lonely, but I was free. I learned to feel that emotion, free from the distraction of 808s and hi-hats. To paraphrase my favorite sad (ish) song of all-time: I’d never been so alone. But I’d never felt so alive.
Even the most downcast lyrics stand as reminders to me that it can get better. And it did. Because I still remember that day, for reasons far beyond my blissful and wistful alt-country ahas. It was January 10, 2021.
After the conclusion of Born On Flag Day’s closer, “Stung,” there’s a silence. That’s when my life irreversibly changed for the better. Still wandering aimlessly around downtown Phoenix, I ran into my virtual crush from the college radio station. We had never met in person.
“Is that the legendary Mia Andrea?” I called out to her.
It was. She is. We spent the next six months inseparable. My world felt like indie pop.
I was carless and careless then, walking everywhere in Phoenix for both business and pleasure. But four months later, I got my first vehicle as an adult, a maroon Kia Optima that I once drove intermittently in high school (when lucky) and now got to drive semi-permanently. It was a gift from my dad, a bargain find of his, fresh off the dealership lot as a former test drive vehicle when he bought it years earlier.
For two years, I drove around Phoenix in that Kia listening to any and everything. In that sweet early-relationship honeymoon period, it was hits from Circa Waves and Two Door Cinema Club. On good days, it heard Cheekface and Chance, “BedRock” and “Bed Head.” That Kia often took Mia and I to record shop at Zia, where — once — we heard Sia playing through the record store speakers. We laughed our asses right into the rock aisle.
When driving alone, I preferred volume level 35.
Turned it down to 15 if I had company.
Turned it up to 40 if I wanted catharsis.
Only maxed it out at 45 if I needed it.
And I did. I needed it quite a bit these last few years, and more often than not, like my dad in that Camaro or Chrysler or Cruiser, I turned to the warm embrace of melancholy. Sad guys and gals with an acoustic guitar and an undercurrent of hope. And, for me, the vague smell of bacon, eggs, toast and melted cheese.
MJ Lenderman and Middle Brother. Wilco and Waxahatchee. Son Volt and Susto.
Tears were shed into those meshed black seats. Vocal chords were shredded howling at the moon to “Size Of The Moon.” I nicknamed the car Lazarus — Lazzo for short. It had been hit before. Towed. Repaired. Lost. (Don’t ask.) But it always came back. There were always more songs to sing.
But last week, Lazzo didn’t hear any acoustic guitars. It did, on the other hand, hear “Burning Man,” a ripper of a song by one of my dad’s favorite bands, Third Eye Blind. It’s an underrated song on one of my all-time favorite records, but “Burning Man” turned out to be my former sedan’s swan song.
Just under two minutes into the ragged 90s rock anthem, on my commute to work, I got in a car accident on the freeway. Thankfully, the crash had no injuries. But the car is most certainly totaled. And that night, 1,600 miles from the Phoenix streets where I made the Optima a sentimental music haven, it hit me that I’ll never drive it again.
Every day, on the way to work, I drive past red and black metal scraps, painted like the self-titled album cover on the screen when it halted. I see years of memories on that Minnesota road shoulder. The collision replays in my head over and over.
I’m overwhelmed by piecemeal memories of the driver’s seat. I’m pulling into the driveway of my childhood home after a high school event, parked long enough to let the song end and the sadness, too. I’m headed down a residential street in Phoenix with the windows down. I’m taking the long way home. There’s an iced coffee in the cupholder, leaving condensation stains that will now never be cleaned. I’m listening to Zach Bryan, or Slaughter Beach, Dog, or whoever it may have been that day.
I choke up remembering that there, in the Passenger Seat, Mia first heard some of the most important songs from my childhood. I dwell on the many times I waited outside of her dorm to pick her up, blasting bass so loudly she’d hear it from the building’s elevator inside.
Lazzo saw nine states, five years and 54,374 miles. There are still pennies stuck to the bottom of the console. Colorful straws never unsheathed on late night collegiate fast food runs. An empty cardboard box in the trunk, for whenever I relocate next.
But every nostalgic glimpse is interrupted now when I remember the odor of oily smoke, radiating from the Kia’s dented dashboard. Stalled out on a Minneapolis interstate, I stepped away from Lazzo for the final time, the pungent smell still lingering in my nostrils today.
And then last night, listening to Born On Flag Day once again, I remembered the smell of Ryan Foster’s breakfast sandwich. It was dark out. But not in. I’m reminded that there are always more songs on the setlist.
Somewhere in the silence between “Stung” and “Goodnight Irene,” I figured that out.
Omg I love that Deer Tick album. I listened to it constantly after I saw them open for Jenny Lewis years ago and thought they put on a great performance.