REVISED Songs for If You Are Saying Goodbye

Well fam, I made it. It's the end of the semester. Unfortunately, that means that this is my farewell blog post. It's been quite the ride, but I’ve enjoyed the opportunity to share my thoughts with you. I found it fitting to close with "Songs for If You Are Saying Goodbye." 

The stigma in our culture about goodbyes makes them a sort of quick and painless gesture. The physical goodbye occurs, then a hug or a wave, and people go on their way. “There’s always Skype, or Facetime, or calling, or texting” is a common statement about reconnecting with people once you’re physically separated. It’s almost as if people are exclaiming that goodbyes aren’t even goodbyes anymore so much as a “see you later” or “I’ll call you soon.” Goodbyes have evolved into being seen as the present action alone (rather than the present action plus the future effects and emotions). But is it really that simple?

1. “So Long” by Ingrid Michaelson

“So Long” is deep and thoughtful and wistful. The guitar accompaniment is intricate and entangled, just like a goodbye is. The song examines the actual goodbye- the parting ways. Michaelson first sings of the build-up to a goodbye. Her situation has changed from a previously blissful relationship to a dark, consequential one. It’s heavy. It’s complicated. It’s going to be painful, and there’s still feelings there, but it’s time to say goodbye. Michaelson exclaims, “…and now you sit upon my chest, knock out my wind, knock out my best.” In “The Art of Saying a Professional Goodbye,” Ed Batista examines helpful tips and tricks to parting ways as a result of his extensive experience with goodbyes. One of the most profound things he says is “Endings are — and should be — emotional experiences.” Damn right they are. Michaelson has definitely exemplified that through her metaphor.

Later, Michaelson hits home when she sings, “…and so long to ever afters; so long to you.” At this point, and at all points when she says so long, the guitar fades out and lets the vocals take center stage. This allows the "so long" to linger with you, and almost haunt you. 

Michaelson speaks of an ending constant—of an ending certainty of always being there. An ending infinity. Jason Mraz holds similar sentiment in his anthem, “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye” when he sings, “I thought we’d get to see forever, but forever’s gone away.” Goodbyes often deprecate the past notion of an eternity: of an everlasting. They slap you in the face and show you that nothing is forever. Families can be torn apart, best friends can leave you, “soul mates” can break up, and close-knit groups can drift apart. Goodbyes can end even the most certain of certainties; they can cut away at the most foundational of foundations. That realization is a weighty one to come to.

2. “Without You” by David Guetta ft. Usher

“Without You” moves beyond the present goodbye in Michaelson's "So Long" to the immediate realizations after one. The song is an anthem of Guetta examining himself and his life without “you.” The “you” is ambivalent: we don’t know who the “you” is. We don’t know if it’s an old friend, an ex-girlfriend, or a family member. We don’t know when the “you” walked into Guetta’s life, or when the “you” left it. We know no name, no age, no gender. Only “you.” That aspect makes the song personable. It allows the listener to fill in the “you.” Because, really, we’ve all been David Guetta in this song, and we all have a “you.”

The song has a chugging electronic sound accompanied with Usher's wail. The result is melancholic, and makes a statement. It's as if the chugging music is the chugging of life, ever-moving, and ever-expecting people to be catching up right along with it-- but sometimes, people need to slow down and pause and catch up with themselves. Sonically, the song explores that contrast.

Guetta explains “I can’t look, I’m so blind, I lost my heart, I lost my mind without you.” Guetta is struggling. He’s floating through life in a cloud of uncertainty and adjustment. Without his “you,” Guetta has lost a constant. When a constant is no longer a constant, the individual is changed. Guetta is altered. He is not the same from what has happened, and from what he has gone through. He explains, “I won't soar, I won't climb. If you're not here, I'm paralyzed without you.” He’s stumbling through life without a clear direction, and his efforts have clearly suffered a hit because of it. That stumble is common after such a life change as a goodbye. In Sacrificing Families: Navigating Laws, Labor, and Love Across Borders, a book about the effects of separation on immigrant families of El Salvador, author Leisy J. Abrego interviews a local school principal, who examines that there is a tangible difference when parents leave to find work in other countries. Their children, the students, are often morose, quieter, and their school work starts to decline. The students are affected in all aspects of their lives, not just the aspect [family] where a hole has been created. The effects of goodbyes have a way of multiplying from one part of someone’s life to all of their life. That expansion occurs as the individual realizes that they’re different without someone. Goodbyes don’t just affect the individual in the present of the action, even though there is an impact there. The absence of a person, the ongoing goodbye, can be just as impactful and painful. If someone wants to help me out in breaking that to Ingrid Michaelson, that'd be stellar.

3. “Someone Like You” by Adele

“Someone Like You” exhibits the next phase often seen in a goodbye, after the initial action and the immediately following pain. It examines the inner struggle between not wanting to move on and the "fuck you, I'll find someone else." "Someone Like You" explores that contrast. It is one of Adele’s most profound ballads. That’s saying something, because the woman is a powerhouse. The song opens with the same intricacy of “So Long,” except instead of an acoustic guitar, the instrument of choice is a piano.

Adele sings of the struggles of letting go and moving on. She says, “I hate to turn up out of the blue uninvited, but I couldn't stay away, I couldn't fight it. I had hoped you'd see my face and that you'd be reminded that for me, it isn't over.” Goodbyes seem final. Often, they are final. But that finality can be hard to grasp, hard to accept, and hard to move on from.

Some goodbyes are regretted and mourned over on both sides. In cases like those, when (or if) a reunification occurs, the relationship is often bigger and better than before. In Tragedy in Hegel's Early Theological Writings, Peter Wake best sums it up: “An original unity is divided and the increasing intensity of the alienation arising from this division culminates in the triumphant return of this prior union but in a developed form” (183). However, if that feeling was not mutual, then neither is the urge to reconnect. For Adele, it may not be over, but for her contrast, it definitely is. Her contrast’s anthem would probably sound something more like “I’ll Forget You” by Peter Bradley Adams: “…as the winter moves in there’s a love I used to know; but I’ll forget you, so bye-bye.”

Goodbyes are intricate. Everyone feels and reacts and moves away from them differently. These different reactions often lead people to believe that others weren’t affected. But all are, just in different forms and in different ways. The length and profundity of the impact of a goodbye may be different for everyone, but the impact is always there.

4. "Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)" by Green Day 

"Good Riddance" opens with a guitar chord progression that is (or appears to be) messed up twice before getting it together and going smoothly and beginning the song. This helps to produce the incredibly melancholic tone of the song that perfectly encapsulates the nostalgia after a goodbye. It’s messy. It’s complicated. And it’s definitely crazy.

“Good Riddance” talks about a goodbye as "something unpredictable but in the end that's right." You don't always expect goodbyes. You don’t always want them. You don’t always see them coming, and you don’t always foresee the profound impact they will have. You may not foresee how much your life will change because of one person or one piece of your life changing. But it will change. In the end though, when it comes to it, “I hope you had the time of your life.”

This song shows the effect of a long-term goodbye, beyond the action of the parting, beyond the initial emotions, and beyond the struggle of acceptance. In "Good Riddance," there has been enough distance between the person and the physical goodbye to really step back and look back. There’s nostalgia there. There’s memories and emotions and events that can’t be repeated. That’s hard to accept, but at least the times were some to remember.  

Krystal D’Costa examines goodbyes in her article, “The Meaning of Goodbye,” and explains that with texting and calling and social media and video chats “they [goodbyes] are only as final as you allow them to be.” But are they? Is talking on the phone with someone the same as partying late into the night with them? Or is texting the same as cuddling on a couch? Or can you hug over a video chat? Do you think of "times of your life" as a phone call?

Goodbyes are not just the action that society molds them to be. There’s the action of a goodbye, the physical hug or wave and “See you later,” or “Have a nice life,” or “Let’s Skype next week,” or even, simply, “Goodbye.” But there’s more than that. There’s the ongoing goodbyes. Saying goodbye to the person you were when you were with a person. Saying goodbye to the times you had and the moments you shared. Goodbyes may not mean having to let a person go or that they’re leaving your life forever anymore, but you are saying goodbye to an aspect. A piece. A goodbye to moments. Moments that can’t be repeated, or replicated. But, also, moments and memories that can’t be altered or devalued. Traditions and habits may have to be put down and said farewell to at a goodbye, but the people they happened with don’t. You may have to learn to say a goodbye to moments, but you never have to say a goodbye to memories. I hope you don't say goodbye to the memories made here.  

Bibliography

Abrego, Leisy J. Sacrificing Families: Navigating Laws, Labor, and       Love Across Borders. Stanford: Stanford University Press,           2014. Print.

Adams, Peter Bradley. “I’ll Forget You.” 2008. MP3.

Adele. “Someone Like You.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube, 29        Sept. 2011. Web. 28 Nov. 2015.

Batista, Ed. “The Art of Saying a Professional Goodbye.” Harvard         Business Review. Harvard Business School Publishing, 7 May         2014. Web. 19 Nov 2015. 

D’Costa, Krystal. “The Meaning of Goodbye.” Scientific American.         Scientific American, 9 May 2012. Web. 19 Nov 2015. 

Green Day. “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life).” Online video clip.        YouTube. YouTube, 26 Oct. 2009. Web. 28 Nov. 2015.

Guetta, David. “Without You ft. Usher.” Online video clip. YouTube.        YouTube, 14 Oct. 2011. Web. 28 Nov. 2015.

Michaelson, Ingrid. “So Long.” Online video clip. YouTube. YouTube,        1 June 2011. Web. 28 Nov. 2015.

Mraz, Jason. “It’s So Hard to Say Goodbye to Yesterday.” Online           music clip. YouTube. YouTube, 29 June 2014. Web. 18 Nov.           2015. 

Wake, Peter. Tragedy in Hegel’s Early Theological Writings.               Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2014. Print.