When everything Stops Making Sense
Stop Making Sense, 1984. Dir. Jonathan Demme.
Home. The official Oxford Dictionary definition of ‘Home’ is: “the place where one lives permanently, especially as a member of a family or household.” But I think the word ‘Home’ is more than that. That might be the altruistic, “correct” definition, but ‘Home’ to me is more of a feeling. Home is the place in your heart where love lives, grows, endures and dies. It’s that first kiss, or the last. It’s that knowing, lingering look you give your friend across the room when something funny happens that only you two would get. It’s David Byrne lovingly watching those carefully selected pictures rush across the screens above the stage during ‘This Must Be The Place’. Home is the destination where everyone wants to find themselves. Home, where I want to be.
Talking Heads found me at such a strange, vital transitional period of my life. It was March 2020, I’d just broken up with my first serious relationship - steaming stupidly into my second. It was my last year of university, potentially the last time I’d live with my best friends and to add the icing on the cake, Covid had just reared its ugly head, trapping us inside. There was a lot to be sad, anxious, and confused about. And trust me, I was. Four years on, despite new circumstances and different environments, it’s hard to say that those feelings have vanished, dissipated, or faded away.
During those first few months of Covid; we’d spend our time trying to do something. Whether that be actively avoiding writing a script for our dissertation, popping to the furthest supermarket we could just to be out of the house, or even starting a sort of film club where we’d show each other our favourites (which quickly became quite competitive and nasty). We tried to fill our time with things that mattered, or should matter, but ended up wasting it, watching it fade in and out every day without an ounce of respect or appreciation for the tough but privileged position we were in.
Stop Making Sense, 1984. Dir. Jonathan Demme.
It was an ordinary afternoon and I’d just finished a FaceTime with my then new girlfriend. I walked down the stairs, plonked myself in the poorly painted lounge and said hello to my companions. I think at this point, we’d not started getting on top of each other as much as, obviously and inevitably, we would. Anyway, after some pleasantries and teasing about what I’d been doing, I was asked if I had ever seen this before. And on the TV, in the background was this man. This slender, strikingly skinny, nimble, odd Roy Keane lookalike. He was dancing, contorting, convulsing his way through a song I’d never heard before. I’d never heard of the Talking Heads, nor David Byrne before this. Instantly, I was enamoured. The song, which I would find out to be called ‘Life During Wartime’ was phenomenal, and the stage presence, the actions, the dancing of this human blew my mind. It was genuinely other worldly. Omnipotent.
For one reason or another, I stayed for a few more songs and then headed to do something. But all throughout the day, and the night, and the following week, I couldn’t get Life During Wartime out of my head. Several hundred YouTube views later, practicing them dance moves in the mirror and chewing my girlfriends ear off about it, she asked me, what did I think to the other songs? Fuck. The other songs! It came to the point where I couldn’t hold out any longer, and even though I didn’t know any of these other songs, I needed to watch the whole thing.
So one night, we put on a decent copy of Stop Making Sense and, though this maxim is invariably overused; it genuinely did change my life. When you’re growing up and start finding those little things, films, songs, bands, poems, video games. Things that you find on your own, that aren’t bequeathed by an elder in your life; it feels special, formative. That’s what Stop Making Sense by Talking Heads is to me. Though it appeared to me by chance: it felt like it was mine.
Quickly, it became the soundtrack of my life in that moment. I’d play it over and over again, singing along in the shower, listening avidly on my daily supermarket visits. It became the 74 minutes (the original album) of escape, hope, love, sorrow, yearning and despair. It made me feel human again.
Stop Making Sense, 1984. Dir. Jonathan Demme.
On one of the last nights of living in our Uni shared house we decided it would be a good idea to drop acid and set out on a debacle of tomfoolery. During our own contorting and convulsing (disguised as dancing), the Stop Making Sense version of This Must Be The Place (Naïve Melody) found itself playing. It might have been the acid, it might have been the mounting pressure of not knowing what’s next; or when (even if) I’d get to see these friends again. But I stood there, listening to this song and I wept. It wasn’t a tear or two but a full on, melodramatic, sweaty and snotty cry. These people; this band, this album, THAT song defined what home meant to me. And I will never forget that feeling.
I’ll be the first to admit, I’ve not even listened to a good half of Talking Heads studio recorded albums, something I am only a tiny bit ashamed about, but Stop Making Sense is a force in my life I will never not cherish. Six of the sixteen songs off of the album are in my Top 20 played of all time on Spotify. The big suit tattoo I have on my arm (often mistaken for Elvis or Brian Ferry); a constant reminder of how this band makes me feel. Dancing to Life During Wartime with Daniel and Matthew will never be a memory I won’t cherish. Seeing David Byrne’s American Utopia (Stop Making Sense’s spiritual sister) on Broadway, in New York, on my birthday, will never be a memory that I take for granted. All of these formative life experiences have Stop Making Sense weaved and looped around them, squeezing and hugging them tight.
Flash forward four years, I have just re-watched Stop Making Sense on the biggest screen I could find, those lingering feelings of depression, anxiety, confusion still ever-present. No words I will ever be able to succinctly string into a sentence could do justice to how this film, and these songs, make me feel. David Byrne dancing, being happy, gives me an unexplainable sort of catharsis I can lose myself in. Everything outside of those 84 fucking minutes simply just…disappeared. Those songs, that dancing, that flailing, is just as important, just as precious, and just as priceless to me now, as they were then. As for This Must Be The Place? Despite the contexts changing, despite us aging, and despite some straining situations which I’ve found myself enduring, this song made me realise that my friends are my home. And that is where I’ll always want to be.