Replies

I’m probably going to write way too much, but for this DMA who’s been pushing classical music for the past 45 years, Johnny Cash’s “Hurt” video has been an exceptionally powerful artwork to me in different times.

First, my father died in 1996. He was an old country junkie: Hank Williams Sr., Conway Twitty, Ed Ames, and of course Cash. In my music studies I went from rock to fusion to jazz to classical to medieval, but avoided country because I didn’t want to be Okie like my dad. But when Cash’s “Hurt” came out in 2002, for the first time in my life I could hear what my father had heard in all those country 45s he had collected; I wanted to tell him, but it was six years too late. Whenever appropriate, I have used the video in my music courses ever since.

The second time was two years ago, when my wife passed away after years of debilitating MS, exacerbated by COVID and ending with liver failure. Driving to the crematorium to obtain her remains, I turned on the radio which landed on a country channel, and they started playing “Hurt.” It got to the lyrics

What have I become, my sweetest friend?
Everyone I know goes away in the end

And I had to pull over from bursting into tears. It was the last time my grief poured out; the grief didn’t go away, but the song had broken the dam and let out the worst.

And then there was...yesterday. I have been attempting to move on with my life, with someone I loved, who said she loved me, and we talked about marriage and being together for the rest of our lives. A few weeks ago, without warning she left and went over 1000 miles away, with a man she had just met the day before, and it has been very painful. Yesterday was when I was preparing for “Hurt” in my course, and once again I heard the lyric

You could have it all, my empire of dirt:
I will let you down, I will make you hurt

And once again it broke the dam. No piece of classical music, no piece of jazz music has ever moved me when I needed moving as this one has.

I wouldn’t have written any of this if the thread hadn’t been posted, but I can say nothing but thank you to Rubin and Cash, for bringing me back to my father, saying goodbye to my wife, and once again working through the pain of betrayal that all people experience because they are people. We come here on FR to try to save our country, to try to keep freedom, but at the same time we have to keep ourselves alive, by living, through happiness and pain, through joy and grief.