No. 071 - Nick Drake’s “Road” changed my life
A rotting picnic table, the Grand Tetons, and a secret stash of film reels under the stairs — Josh Cohen assembles memories of his grandfather
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 •
I chronicled the start and end of my grandfather’s life on film in one minute and fifty-nine seconds, set to the song “Road” by Nick Drake.
On a summer afternoon, from a lawn chair, my grandfather watched me disassemble a rotting picnic table on his back patio. He was content, mouth slightly agape, eyes softened with familiarity. That table had been there since the beginning of time as it existed in my memory. I didn’t need any tools — the joints gave way to light force, rusty screws cutting through aged wood.
Piece by piece, all the parts of the table were neatly piled on the patio stones.
“I’m going to take this down to the woods,” I told him, standing over the pile.
“Okay, Joshy,” he said.
My grandparent’s house stood in front of an old growth arboretum in northern New Jersey. I walked to the edge of the forest, placed the wood neatly on a dirt patch hidden behind a bush, and stared at the pile’s shape for a long moment. There were lots of bird songs but the scene felt quiet.
A few months later it was autumn. I finished up an in-and-out twelve-mile hike in Grand Teton National Park to a spot called Death Canyon. Getting back to my car at the trailhead, completely worn, I noticed a new voice message from my dad.
“Something I need to tell you, umm, call me back, Josh.”
Looking out to reds and yellows against an electric blue sky with the impossibly steep Grand Tetons behind them, my dad was on the phone. Dad told me my grandfather had a heart attack. He was 86. He meant the world to me. And getting the news in such a beautiful place after such physical exertion put me in an altered state. Breaking down the table was the last time I saw him.
I was staying with my cousin in Jackson Hole. He took me out with his buddy Mike to drink beers and shoot bottles. I didn’t want to cry in front of them. The guns and the beers helped. I changed my flight and came home early for a pine-box funeral.
Months later, we were planning a memorial service. There was a secret room, or nook really, under the staircase in my grandfather’s basement. Inside was a vault and piles of reels of film — home movies my grandfather had taken of his travels and family, captured from the late 1940s till the late 1990s when noncommercial film processing became harder to come by. The room smelled slightly of vinegar, which meant the film was breaking down.
I took the reels, got them digitally transferred, and started organizing about fifteen hours of footage. My grandfather had made his own edits, splicing scenes by hand, and I imagined him there in his basement, focused and sweating over those cuts and joins — an amateur filmmaker working for no one but himself and his family.
I had been listening to Nick Drake a lot in college, and “Road” came to mind. It’s a simple song that reads like a mantra; its lyrics speak of transition. The guitar is raw and beautiful with lots of movement. There’s a sparseness to it, a kind of fracture that makes you feel every tiny piece.
In one minute and fifty-nine seconds, I chronicled my grandfather’s life in film, arranged chronologically to Nick Drake’s “Road.”
I probably listened to the song about three hundred times while putting the film together. I could feel Nick’s sad fingers on those strings. Editing small sections of the film at a time, I was listening to the song in pieces; the same way I took the picnic table apart in pieces. From start to finish. I assembled pieces of my grandfather’s life on those reels, with him, and with Nick.
It’s impossible for me to hear “Road” without thinking of my grandfather, without feeling the weight of those pieces, which I love and hold dear. ◆
Categories
Friendship • Family • Coming of Age • Romance • Grief • Spirituality & Religion • Personal Development
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Top 10 • Grace's Favorites • Secret
About Josh
Josh Cohen is a multidisciplinary Director, Writer, and Creative based in Los Angeles, California.
Instagram @cosh_johen
Website joshcohenjoshcohen.com
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