No. 068 - Bob Seger’s “Night Moves” changed my life
From riding shotgun with her dad to road trips with friends, Laura Frizzell talks big love, good sadness, and treasuring life's great adventures and little beauties
This Song Changed My Life is an independent music publication featuring essays from people all around the world about the songs that mean the most to them. Created (and illustrated) by Grace Lilly.
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• 4 min read •
Much of my childhood was spent riding in the passenger seat of my dad’s 1993 Dodge Caravan while he ran his grown-up errands. The soundtrack to those jaunts was always the local “Oldies but Goodies” radio station that churned out the music from my dad’s youth — Buddy Holly and Chubby Checker all the way up to Elton John and Linda Ronstadt. “Night Moves” by Bob Seger was most definitely in the rotation, but as a child it was just part of the familiar soundscape I was used to, in the way that kids spend so much of their childhoods hazily absorbing their parents’ musical interests without really noticing.
Years later, in the spring of 2011 when I was 21, I found myself in the passenger seat of a different van. This time, it was a blue Chevy Astro being responsibly driven by a sweet, tattooed musician who was taking me out on our first date. I barely knew him, but as we drove our way through Nashville, I could already sense that he would be an important character in my story (for a time). I have a vivid memory of the city skyline painted in shadows against a sunset the color of orange sherbet, and there, right there, “Night Moves” playing quietly in the background as we drove. Suddenly, the song stood out to me in a way it never had before. As I took in the music and lyrics, I felt everything — a dull ache to go back to my grandparents’ farm for a Sunday visit, the tingling closeness of summer just around the corner. Almost like a premonition, I could imagine the shape of the big love I would eventually feel for the boy beside me — a love that would become so soft, sweet, and clumsy, and, later, a little bloody and jagged around the edges but, yes, important.
After that night, it seemed like I noticed “Night Moves” playing everywhere for a while, like looking at a clock and always magically finding it to be 11:11. Frequently, as I bussed tables and closed out my section for the night at my restaurant job, I would hear the song coming from the speaker in the mostly empty dining room. Hearing it would immediately fill me with what I like to call “that good sadness” and I would wax poetic in my mind about everyone drifting home for the evening.
In the summers of 2013 and 2014, with both the musician and the restaurant job behind me, I embarked on two cross-country road trips with two of my closest friends. On the first trip, we explored the Mid and Southwest, stopping at a desert carnival, mountain towns, near an extraterrestrial crash site, and even in the glittering heart of Las Vegas on the Fourth of July. On the second, we blew kisses at towering Redwood trees and gasped with delight at the sight of enormous buffaloes lazily crossing the road in Yellowstone National Park.
The central theme of each trip was the same — our regular lives were hurtling toward adulthood (as best we could understand it) and on the other side of these annual road trips we would be met with graduate school, career choices, and so many life altering decisions to be made. Our trips were a reprieve, but also a means of growing further into ourselves. For thousands of miles, we would talk about our hopes and fears, naming the things we wanted desperately for our lives and puzzling out how we might attain them. I still marvel that we claimed that time for ourselves so we could have the kind of adventure that can be so hard to capture as you get older and more entrenched in life and the things that keep you anchored in place.
“Night Moves” was a recurring mainstay during those trips as my friends and I bared our souls to each other, took a chance on our own foolhardiness, and saw incredible sights beyond our dreams. It resonated with each of us differently, but for me the song was synonymous with the sweet ache of getting older, learning to appreciate the little beauties in life like roadside diners and cackling with friends, that wild restlessness that goads you into the best and worst decisions you'll ever make, and being on the trembling edge of your own magic, hoping against hope. As Seger said, “Felt the lightning, yeah / And I waited on the thunder.”
Recently, I was driving around running my own grown-up errands while talking on the phone with one of my road trip buddies. Through my car's Bluetooth, we laughed as we sang “Night Moves” together, giggling especially hard at our jumbled recitation of the repeated lyrics: “Workin’ and practicin’.” Many years have passed since our college and road tripping days, and while the season has undeniably changed, the song's significance remains the same: feel the big love and that good sadness, hold close the little treasures, make your own adventure, and just keep workin’ on your night moves. ◆
Categories
Friendship • Family • Coming of Age • Romance • Grief • Spirituality & Religion • Personal Development
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About Laura
Laura Frizzell lives in New Orleans, Louisiana with her partner and their four cats. She is the Archives Manager at the National WWII Museum and a freelance illustrator for Antigravity, a local publication.
Instagram @lauraisameow
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