When a desktop, laptop, or smartphone freeze, the first thing we often do is restart. Hold whatever combination of keys/buttons down long enough until everything powers down. Maybe we wait one minute; maybe more. Then we power it all back on. And see what happens.
That’s where I was in 2020. No full-time job; another election full of vitriol directed at my community; and a pandemic. I would lay in bed at night doomscrolling. TikTok was relatively new and when Nathan Apodaca (a.k.a. @420doggface208) showed up skateboarding to his potato factory job in Idaho, drinking cranberry juice and lip syncing to “Dreams” by Fleetwood Mac, I got pulled in. First, he looked like a relative, second, who doesn’t love “Dreams?” Especially when a heart, your heart, my heart, is weary?
And then, “Dreams” was everywhere. It was back on the charts. People were asking when it had first come out. Were they a new band? Okay. Interesting. But being unemployed is being unemployed and a pandemic is a pandemic so I packed up my stuff and headed back for home in Texas. I had no idea when I would power back on, but I knew I didn’t trust the storage unit I had rented for who knows how long to hold my records. I loaded up my car and drove the 4 hours back to Amarillo, not knowing when, if ever, I would come back to New Mexico.
During those five long months, I listened to Fleetwood Mac’s discography over and over again. It became the salve I needed.
Fast forward to now. TikTok is at it again. All of a sudden “Silver Springs” is on the charts. And once again, my heart is weary and Fleetwood Mac is providing the medicine. All that to say, the version of “Silver Springs” that is playing non-stop right now is from the live album The Dance. I was 21 when that record was released. I had seen the concert on MTV and because I was broken-hearted; because I wanted to scream some of those lyrics at this one person, I bought the CD. I knew nothing of Fleetwood Mac. Nothing of Stevie Nicks or Lindsay Buckingham. I just know what I saw in that concert video and heard in that record. Something I felt, perhaps even understood, but could not name.
Stevie Nicks was 49 when that concert was recorded. I don’t know that I knew that then. I just know that there was something of an experience I couldn’t identify when she sang “Landslide” and almost whispers the lyric, “Children get older, I’m getting older, too.” Looks exchanged between her and Lindsay Buckingham in not only “Silver Springs” but in “Rhiannon” and “Go Your Own Way” showed something of an old hurt that will never go away. The same thing happens in Christine McVie’s “Songbird” performance which closes the show. I couldn’t put my finger on it, but there was something there. I knew it.
Back then, I carried all my CDs in a black, nylon case that held up to 200 CDs (I think). It seems crazy that I lugged that around in my car, but I did. I moved to Austin that year to go to school at the University of Texas and every time I would get on the road for the 8-hour drive that took me through Texas hill country towns with names like Early and Rising Star, The Dance was one of the CDs I would play the whole way through, never skipping a single song. Why am I writing this?
Because every time, I get on social media lately, I hear “Silver Springs.” Because now I’m 49 and I’ve had to restart my life two more times since 2020. Because tonight I was driving from Albuquerque back up to Santa Fe at sunset. “Silver Springs” came on and I thought about all those miles I drove back then between Austin and Amarillo. I often drove all night and would pass houses with living room lights glowing in the dark and I would always wonder when I would feel like I finally had a home. Like I was finally where I was supposed to be.
There is no happy ending here. I don’t know any more than I did in 1997 (perhaps I know less). What I do know is that all those lyrics hit a little bit different at 49. I can look back and see a trail of things that will never go away, and will always make a spiral of time.
Patricia Marie Perea 