Fast Cars and Thoughtful Moments
Like many of you, I watched the Tracy Chapman / Luke Combs duet of Fast Car from the Grammys last night and was powerfully and unexpectedly moved. Also, like many of you, I remember vividly how that song — and that artist — stood out in the spring of 1988, when the radio was blasting INXS, George Michael, and Terence Trent D’arby in a never-ending, power-pop loop.
She was just so different. So human and real.
Tracy Chapman’s voice and talent felt — then, and again last night — like a marble-smooth boulder somehow preexisting the river itself. There was all this stuff — all these gated drum tracks, borderline erotic videos, pyrotechnics — and then, suddenly . . . a lady with a voice and an acoustic guitar. She shut us all up for a minute, sort of a collectively stunned silence of truly listening before, inevitably, we were back into the radio roll of Rick Astley, Poison, and Bobby Brown.
For all her understated, graceful humility, she left a deeper mark than those acts. One that made hearing her sing again last night more than a bit of nostalgia. It felt, instead, like an escape from temporality itself — a sudden relocation to a space of truth, beauty, and light.
God, that was lovely.
All day, I’ve enjoyed seeing that I shared that experience with so many others, many of whom have commented on the balm of a queer Black woman singing a duet with a white country music star in a way that, for a few minutes, united a very broken land. But there’s a painful truth inside that story of harmony. The story is about what Black folk and white folk were bonding over last night when you dig into the song itself. Fast Car is not a ditty about a road trip, after all. It’s an aching plea for meaning inside the heart of poverty, abuse, intergenerational trauma, and unrelenting pain.
See, my old man’s got a problem.
He lives with the bottle; that’s the way it is.
He says his body’s too old for working.
His body’s too young to look like his.
My mama went off and left him.
She wanted more from life than he could give
I said somebody’s got to take care of him.
So I quit school, and that’s what I did.
What united the nation last night, beneath the artistry and the harmony of the performance, was a pain that is profoundly familiar to anyone who has had to make those choices because when they turned around, they were all alone with the need.
You got a fast car.
We go cruising, entertain ourselves.
You still ain’t got a job.
And I work in the market as a checkout girl.
I know things will get better.
You’ll find work, and I’ll get promoted.
We’ll move out of the shelter.
Buy a bigger house and live in the suburbs.
What unites us is hope, based on nothing but how sometimes that’s all we have left in the larder. We’re united by how gallingly unfair it is to be stuck in the churn.
You got a fast car.
I got a job that pays all our bills.
You stay out drinking late at the bar.
See more of your friends than you do of your kids.
I’d always hoped for better.
Thought maybe together you and me’d find it.
I got no plans; I ain’t going nowhere.
Take your fast car and keep on driving.
What unites us is the tragedy of how whole decades can go by with no cavalry, no relief, no ending to the pain and the loneliness until we’re brought, once again, to the decision point of failure or flight — yet another final conversation with ourselves wherein we realize it’s all over without escape.
You got a fast car.
Is it fast enough so you can fly away?
You gotta make a decision.
Leave tonight or live and die this way.
It was beautiful to take a moment last night and sing that song together, to feel the unity and empathy arcing between two incredibly gifted musicians who lit up our night. But it would be more beautiful, still, if we remembered why Tracy Chapman wrote that lament to begin with. She wrote it because, in America, it’s too damn easy for anyone without the dollars to defend themselves — white or black, gay or straight, immigrant or native-born, cis or trans — to disappear into the darkness without a friend, without a sound, without a song.
Thanks for the reminder, Tracy and Luke. I’m gonna check in on some friends now and see how they’re holding up. As for you two, y’all got a good thing going, so how about a little bit more?
Maybe a reprise of Talking About a Revolution.
Poor people gonna rise up,
And get their share.
Poor people gonna rise up,
And take what’s theirs.
Mmmmmm. Now, that’s a mighty fine song, too.
Love and solidarity to you all.
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If you like the writing, consider swinging by my website, where you can read the introduction to my new book, Incompatible With Life: A Memoir of Grave Illness, Great Love, and Survival. Let me know what you think!
