Twisting turning through the never

This is the moment I’ve been dreading.

Years ago, when I still bothered with the radio, I would occasionally tune into the oldies station to catch some pleasantly time-weathered tunes from a bygone era: The Temptations, Roy Orbison, even the Monkees when I was feeling particularly masochistic. Production techniques being what they were back then, most of the songs sounded like they were performed by ghosts in a tinfoil submarine, but that was part of the charm. That, and the odd knowledge that that the music was created before I was born, in a time when dinosaurs roamed the earth, and Lyndon Johnson hosted weekly card games with Napoleon and Jesus.

Gradually, as music previews became available online, I bypassed the radio altogether. Even though there was a part of me that missed hearing those strangely comforting jingles for car dealerships and auto parts stores, the radio – which I had always used as a means of deciding what music to buy – slowly lost its purpose.

When you leave something alone for long enough, it can come back to surprise you. Flash forward to a couple of weeks ago, when I logged into my Facebook account – so often a source of dismay and consternation – and saw the following message from a friend: “So I heard ‘Enter Sandman’ by Metallica in the car today ... on the Oldies station!”

Sandman. Metallica. Oldie.

Jeff sad.

To realize just how sad, you have to understand my relationship with this band.

Music has been a huge part of my life since I was old enough to fling boogers. It’s the best thing to happen to ears since the invention of ears. For years, I would hungrily absorb the albums that were scattered about the house: Hendrix and Joplin, Clapton and the Eagles. The kind of stuff that sends classic rock DJs into paroxysms of unbridled glee, usually right before commercials for laundry detergent with pleasant-smelling bears on the box. I loved what I was hearing, but I was always drawn to the heavier, guitar-oriented stuff; the squealing, hypnotic solos at the end of “Hotel California” would give me shivers so violent you’d think I was camping in northern Canada without the requisite sealskin underwear. But I yearned for something more forceful, more cutting.

In high school, I discovered Metallica’s self-titled album – nicknamed “The Black Album” for its ominous monochrome cover. “Enter Sandman” was the first song. I chose a remote, unoccupied corner of the house for my inaugural listen, because frankly, I was nervous. It had always been suggested to me (without justification) that heavy metal was an inherently evil music, the stuff of devils and ritual sacrifices and Tokyo-bashing lizard monsters. With a shaking finger, I hit “play,” and found that the intro to “Sandman” was surprisingly mellow. A simple guitar lick, and then the bass drums, building. And building. And then at just the right moment, bam – a full-bodied riff that could grow chest hair on a baby.

It was heavy. It was crunchy. It was glorious. And unlike many of the bands that had provided my life’s soundtrack to that point, here were musicians that were still writing, still touring, and still vital. Talk about a revelation. It was like a sledgehammer to the face, only enjoyable, since I imagine it would be unpleasant to take an actual sledgehammer to an actual face.

There are monks in Tibet still awaiting experiences so transformative. And now, the album that essentially changed my life is the stuff of oldies stations. Time to buy a pair of glaring white golf pants and start drinking Ensure.

It’s an odd feeling. You spend the majority of your youth thinking that time is a river so long, eons will pass before its waters rush you onward to maturity and beyond. You think the future will occur in roughly never. “And then never comes,” to quote Metallica’s James Hetfield, which I do frequently because I have no life.

Of all the various rites of passage, hearing your generation’s music on an oldies station is one that nobody really anticipates. Parents and educators spend a lot of time prepping you for a number of life’s “firsts,” but radio never enters into it, and so when I saw my friend’s comment, I had nothing to fall back on, no automatic response drilled into me by some colorful mascot with an oversized head.

But no big whoop, because I figured this one out myself: It’s okay.

It’s okay to get older. It’s okay to have your music relegated to antiquity, not least of all because it’s someone’s arbitrary decision anyway. Frankly, graduating from the “hip” youth demographic is a relief, because now I can enjoy what I like without questions of coolness being part of the equation. Maybe the secret to aging gracefully is not caring.

What matters is that music still gives me an electric thrill when it comes booming out of my speakers, a phenomenon no accumulation of decades can touch. It’s immune to a radio station’s labels. And that, in a very real sense, makes it timeless.