Paradise By the Dashboard Light: A Ballad of Agency Loss
We lost an icon. Rock stars come and go, most having discussed what they would do for love, but few who insisted upon what they won’t.
I suppose we’ll remember every lyric as if we played it only yesterday every time we park by a lake without another car in sight. Sure, we may one day find better looking partners, and eventually the kids at school won’t be jealous of our aging bodies, still close if not tight. But they felt so good and so right so many years ago.
So while our frozen environs glow like the metal on the edge of a knife, we’ll hold on tight to our memories and our double-entendres. Seated in the northern midwest, penning essays for an LA-employer, it is truly cold and lonely in the deep, dark night. But I can play “Paradise by the Dashboard Light” forever, remembering both the song and the man who wrote it. Truly, I am doubly blessed.
I remember being barely seventeen and wishing my girlfriend was barely dressed. Our hearts drowned out Napster rather than the radio, and evenings ended with few regrets and my motor running considerably faster than my parents’ Volvo’s.
As a diminutively-statured, nerdy teenage male, I did what I could and hoped wit and charm would do the rest (mother nature was less reliable). Ain’t no doubt about it, some were better blessed.
Eventually, even for geeks, the opportunity to go all the way presents itself (is tonight the night?). We repeat the thought in our heads as music plays the soundtrack of our lives and baseball announcers of yesteryear encourage us to circle the bases.
Each date becomes a pressure cooker, nights out become a litany of baseball metaphors, but I’ll stop right there before I write any further.
Hastily-made decisions decrease our agency. Or, in the parlance of Meatloaf, if we fail to sleep on it. The modern internet hopes we’ll buy now rather than give an answer in the morning.
Your cart can wait all night, but something will ask you via email, pop-up, and other agency-decreasing interruptions “what’s it gonna be?”
And so you buy the product. You think you’ll love it forever. You think you need it. That you’ll never leave without it. That it’ll make you so happy for the rest of your life. That you’ll take it each day or make a gift for your wife. You get it.
Eventually, we cannot take it any longer, and as crazed as a horny teenager, the feeling comes upon us like a tidal wave. We all enter pre-stored credit cards, and shipping’s waived, and hope we’ll love it ‘till the end of time.
We all know what happens next…
We’re praying for the end of time, reading reviews all the time, because if we need to deal with one more frustrating product, our sanity will never survive.
We forgive our weakness, make some new year’s vow, or some other knee-jerk act we can complete right now.
(Another act in pursuit of immediate gratification or release, I might add)
But that’s not all we can do.
We can set up external structures to support better decisions. We can avoid making important decisions with flashing screens from smart phones and computers. This increases our agency.
So, on this tragic morning, we think of a song written long ago and far away, when we saw far less marketing than apps today.
Things should feel good and right when we make decisions. But perhaps less urgent.
The irony of Meat Loaf’s most famous lyric being a prayer for the end of time and offering some pseudo-parody after it hurried up and arrived is not lost on me.
Slow down a beat and turn off the technology before you make your next big decision. If you do nothing else for yourself, do that. And in so doing, Meat Loaf’s warning will live on in his music and our hearts forever.