The Incredible Power of Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes’ “I Miss You”
I never knew how many things I missed until I heard this song, and I only heard it two weeks ago. At least I don’t remember hearing it until two weeks ago. I’m sure I’d crossed its path at some point since my dad kept the radio locked on Oldies 95.7 in my days as a non-voting passenger and since Kanye West sampled it on his first production for Jay-Z on “This Can’t Be Life”, which came out smack in the middle of the days when I made it my business to hunt down every sample the liner notes saw fit to mention.
So maybe I had heard it, but just hadn’t gone through the sort of heartache that you have to have gone through for it to make its impact. To be honest, I don’t think I really even knew the depth of my heartache until I heard it two weeks ago in Teddy Pendergrass’s voice. Soon each spin brought back another heartbreak.
From that first pulse of the organ and the deeply spiritual group vocals that follow, I was in a place where the pain I felt was elevated from a demon that tormented me to a god that I was humbled before. It became a song that made me cherish the size of the holes I’d been left with because they reminded me of the greatness of what I’d lost. For eight and a half minutes, I felt invited to wash myself in honesty. I quickly found that eight and a half minutes wasn’t nearly enough.
The first few times I played it, I missed the versions of myself that lived more productive lives than the current one does; the times when confidence was a fact of life instead of a foundation that was being rebuilt.
Then I missed the headstrong heydays of my old comedy group when the only criteria for something being successful was that we all thought it was funny; before the measurement changed to view counts and development deals; when the laugh something got in the read-through was enough to fuel us through whatever obstacles arose.
Later, I missed all the friends I don’t live close enough to to keep up the quality of the relationships we started. I missed being able to see them without going through airport security and anxiety attacks. I missed all the late night chats that we hadn’t had and all the silly projects we never made. I missed being able to help them move and talking to them without having to catch up.
And then, for a while, I missed the family I had before my parents got divorced; the feeling of having a group of people made of the same stuff that I’m made of with their own rhythm of being together. I missed the worst times as much as the best. I missed the 19 years when I believed we’d always be together and that my idea of home would never change. I imagined moments we might have shared in the future and missed those too. I didn’t get mad. I didn’t even wonder why it had to be this way — I got it — I just missed something I had been lucky enough to have.
But there was one sort of thing that stuck out that I didn’t miss. One thing that, even when I thought long and hard about and even though it’s the subject of the song, I didn’t miss: an ex-girlfriend. I remembered the “breaks” and break-ups that my fiancee and I had been through. I recalled how, in those times, I missed her just as much as I missed all the other things the previous plays of the song had brought up, but I didn’t actually feel that pain anymore. We’d gotten through those times, and realizing that started to change the way I heard the song and how I felt about all of these heartbreaks. It erased the hopelessness and replaced it with possibility. So now, as the song continues to play on repeat, I think about all these things I miss and find myself looking forward to the day that might come when I don’t have to miss them anymore; the days when things might not be quite the same, but feel just as good. That’s the incredible power of Harold Melvin & The Blue Notes’ “I Miss You”.
