Do you remember Phil Collins? Drummer for the recently inducted Hall of Fame group Genesis then like most great actors on a primetime sitcom he spun off to hoist his flag over a land of incredible solo success; Against All Odds, In the Air Tonight, You Can’t Hurry Love, Sussudio, One More Night, Groovy Kind of Love and Separate Lives from the movie White Nights.
Fame for Phil has reached a point of no return. He looks in the mirror everyday wishing none of it would’ve happened. His current love interest has been instructed to never refer to him as Phil. He’s publically made it clear that he wants no part of the persona that helped shape many of our love lives during the Ronald Reagan years.
Fans of the group Genesis have never forgiven him for stepping in where Peter Gabriel left off. Female adult contemporary radio listeners immediately lost interest in their music man when he was rumored to have divorced his wife by sending a fax and yet to this day its never been proven.
Jokingly I’ve always said your twenties are spent doing everything you wanted to do as a teenager, your thirties are blessed with mopping up the mess and at forty…you begin to discover the dreams of a new person in the mirror and for some weird reason you like them better than everybody you’ve been over the past three decades. The problem is, nearly everyone you bump into is an itty bitty pieces part of a chapter you wish would melt from the pages of history.
Being in radio it hurts to see Phil lost in a dull ache. Being human I want to reach out and shake his hand for being honest about his change in life. Most men bottle it up and become grumpy old guys who want nothing to do with their children’s children and having a career is something you did when you were walking in the shoes of that other person that cost you more than you made.
The problem with change is it happens. It’s not like we’re suddenly thrown in to a game and poof Milton Bradley releases a newer model with different rules. I’ve yet to meet the motivational speaker that doesn’t flat out say you were born to die…and somewhere in that channel of A plus B the average person has an extreme difficult time coming up with what it equals.
With wind the mountain changes. No large stack of boulders holds back rain and snow; it acts as if it uses them as tools.
The man dubbed stepfather caught up to his midlife crisis at the birth of my teenage testing of the waters. Spending time in the high school principal’s office was a vacation in paradise compared to being at home. Closed mindedness opened each path to begin the process of running.
You’ll always catch me laughing when someone admits to being a runner. In my mind I see the human spirit taking the players and pieces of the game created and yanking the board from the table then hitting the path. To them it’s a jog, a way to strengthen the heart, a mental getaway like pumping weights or performing martial arts.
In the case of Phil Collins no longer wanting to be the man who invited so much incredible music to the chapters that make up the stones on the roads we walk…it’s as if he’s saying, “I’m tired of running. I want to be me and only me and that guy is not the person looking back at me in the mirror. It’s a past I can’t change. Please let me become who I truly want to be.”
Wow…just saying that shot these finger prints back to the hidden away reminders of my Grandpa’s Bakken and Dobrenz, both lovers of the land, people at farmers markets and church but not so friendly on the front featuring tiny eyes, ears and noses that sort of look like the ones they were carrying. No wonder I spent so many summers standing ten bails high on a stack overlooking the open prairie in the state of Wyoming—this thing called change made me into a runner.
But there was never anybody around to explain it.
I remember Grandma Bakken once telling her husband, “I wish you’d hurry up and get over this…you’re grand children are missing a lot from the man that taught me how to love all things!”
He suffered a heart attack…I never got to meet him while wearing a pair of adult shoes.
I’m anxious to touch the words of other readers of the Phil Collins story; to see if they’re just as forgiving. Let the music maker find a tree to sing his lyrics, let him touch the wind before it slips between the mountains, whisper a tune from the depths of your passing day and allow it to fall onto the plate of a man who’s obviously very hungry to create in different light.
Every house, home, hut or collection of voices comes with a man in the middle of change. Be forgiving in the midst of his new dream. Like a child he’s vowed to explore. Like an adult he’ll locate the invisible chunks of mud then begin to pour the valuable wines that which he has always carried making what he brings something to savor during times when looking into his eyes might be extremely difficult but through peace and understanding it’s more priceless than the day that will come sooner than later when you’ll be locked into a moment created by the art of looking back.
arroecollins@clearchannel.com
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