Today’s pick, Cloudboy by Ubiquitous Synergy Seeker
First spin on the playlist and we’ve pulled a good one. My first experience with USS came from local radio in Toronto, multiple songs from this album got heavy airplay during a year I was able to get 102.1 at work. I loved them immediately. I was working at a shop I hated doing a thing I loved, while I did my damnedest to try and buy a house. After both leaving that job and buying that house, this was on constant rotation while I was doing all the things around said house to make it our own. Close to a decade later, I still listen to them nearly every day. Their music tends to be high energy with real downer lyrics, losing people close to you, drug abuse, fear of abandonment, all sorts of fun things mixed in with songs about how nice it is to not be at work.
This song in particular came to me at a moment when I was struggling to make sense of one of the more distressing situations of my life. My son was born via emergency c-section after four days of labour, during which my wife had an epidural that wore off while they were closing her up from the c-section. The anesthesiologist knocked her out cold to prevent panic as she became aware of the two doctors rummaging around inside her, leaving me alone with our newborn son. I had no idea if she was going to be okay, I’d been awake for the previous thirty hours or so, and now I was afraid I was going to alone with this child forever. I wheeled him back to our room, only to find my parents on the way. They had come with food, knowing that things were not progressing well. They lived close to the hospital The Boy was born in, but I was still surprised to see them. I have a complicated relationship with my parents, one that I’m sure will come up as we work our way through this song list. They saw The Boy and left us so I could spend time with him. My wife and I had decided to do skin to skin contact when he was born but now she was unconscious somewhere and it was just him and I.
I took off my shirt and laid him on my chest, his tiny body felt so fragile in my hands. I held him as he fussed a bit, unsure of what to do. At that moment I felt more alone that I ever had in my life, filled with the feeling that I would never see my wife again. As The Boy began fussing more, I tried to soothe him. What do I do? What do you do with babies?
Sing to them, that was all I could think of.
So I sang this song, slower than the actual version, and it worked. He went to sleep as I sang, his little face pressed against my bare chest. I held together pretty well, up until the last part.
Here’s my all I won’t let you down
Won’t let you down
Here’s my heart I won’t let you down
Won’t let you down
That broke me. I cried, holding him. I wasn’t much of a cryer before having a kid but that experience seemed to open a part of me that leaves me sobbing constantly. Maybe that is better, maybe it’s the depression, I don’t know.
The duo parted ways, amicably as far as I know, a few years ago. This really sucks as The Boy as taken a big interest in the band, probably because they’ve been in his life since the first twenty minutes or so. They have reunited for some shows this summer, if I can get us into something that isn’t at a club where The Boy has to pass as 19, we will see them. It’ll his first real concert and I’d love for it to be something like this.
Early Frost Warning 