No. 031 - Dead Man's Bones’ “My Body’s a Zombie for You” changed my life
No. 031 - Dead Man's Bones’ “My Body’s a Zombie for You” changed my life
When you know, you know. The spooky, sweet song that affirmed Lee Havlicek's intuition.
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🏆 A top-read essay
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 by Grace Lilly, supported by readers.
• 6 min read •
On a cold night in 2011, I was standing in a friend’s kitchen.
I had recently gotten out of a very long relationship. But before that I had moved home. And just before that I had graduated college. And at this moment, in this kitchen, I was sprawling through year 4.5 of what’s succinctly called “complicated grief” (a hat on a hat if ever I’ve heard one).
Those years are partly fuzzy, partly sharp, partly filled with beautiful things, all linked by streaks of night where I couldn’t sleep until the sun came up. But then, it did. And my mom and I, dueling partners in some sleepless game of chicken we did not sign up for, would, for the last time each night, say we should sleep. By phone or from across the room, we’d pull each other off the couch, or, too exhausted, just stay put, and finally fall into sleep, the soft sounds and tv light filling up the space of our rooms.
So I was in a kitchen, at a party.
The night before, I’d heard that a thing — something I hoped would pull me forward, pull me up, pull me out — wasn’t going to happen. I’d gone upstairs, gotten in the tub next to my childhood bedroom, turned on the shower, and sat, pruning in the downpour for I don’t know how long. (Apologies to my mom’s water bill, and… water, generally.) At last, fully cooked and partly mellowed, I lugged myself out of the tub and into my bed.
I slept for the whole night. A rarity.
The next morning, I got up, got dressed, and got in my mom’s car. I piled in a stack of mix CDs (it was late in the game for these, but I wasn’t giving them up, and still haven’t) and drove myself across some state lines. On that particular day, I was supposed to go to a party in a city that I missed. Friends I missed, too, would be there — and I had promised. So there I went. Heavily depressed and ready to party.
Which is how I found myself in that kitchen that winter. I was awake. I was dressed. I was (exceedingly) showered. I was drinking directly from a handle of tequila.
And the thing about this moment in time is that it’s probably not, ideally, the moment you’d pick to meet the person you’re going to marry.
Or maybe it is.
Maybe it’s exactly the moment.
In any event, the first impression? It’s not going to be, let’s say, your best.
But in he walks, dressed like Justin Bieber (didn’t see that coming, did you?) and holding a Justin Bieber doll (ok, fine it was a costume party), and after some confusion about who I was (hello), and what my costume was (“future, mature me,” which is to say — though I did not — I had gotten out of the tub), and where we had previously met (our favorite bar), and how we knew each other (college theater), we spent the next… 4? hours talking.
And when the party was over, and we said our goodbyes, he tried to kiss me.
I say he tried to kiss me because I, uh… ducked. And the kiss, it landed on my head.
Uh huh.
Oh, but don’t worry: He tried once more before leaving as he overheard me quietly wailing what had happened to our mutual friend whose apartment we were in. Our friend, drunk and wearing aviation googles (costume party unrelated), shouted, “WISH HE’D KISSED YOU ON THE MOUTH!”
And the funny thing was that as I slapped my hand over her mouth and turned around to yelp, “He could be right behind me!”… He was. And so, he tried again.
And again: I ducked. (Incredible reflexes for the amount of tequila I had in me.) And this time, I also ran fully out of the building.
Because — and I don’t know why or how or what took hold of my dark and muddled brain in that moment — I knew with absolute certainty that I was going to marry this hot be-Bieber-ed man. And I knew I had, to put it lightly, some shit to put in order.
But I also knew that he would be there when I did.
The shock of this certain but bizarre knowledge fully short-circuited my brain in a way where the only thing I could do for the next 12 of my waking hours, interrupted by only the briefest of sleeps, was run or pace or jump and sing the chorus of “Blinded by the Light.”
Unfortunately for the friends I was staying with, the only words I actually knew to that song were also the title. Doubly unfortunately, that did not stop me from singing.
This is not about that song.
A few weeks later, we were writing letters, this guy and me.
But it was 2011 so, yes, the letters were emails.
They were long and daily and by the time we actually started dating, there would be 73 of them. And a few more have been added to the chain in years since.
In almost every single one, there is a song. (And in one, there are three perfect Kids in the Hall sketches.)
And let me just say, the first song was great. A perfect pick. New to me and instantly one I loved, but different enough that it felt like getting to know someone, like they were there with you. That song and every one that followed still makes me think of those letters. They’re songs I’m careful about sharing, songs I love too completely to give away to just anyone.
I always thought letters were better than emails, but you can’t send a song and hit play on it in a letter.
It was the third song where I hit play and knew I had not only been right at that party, but why.
This one was like hearing a song I had imagined. Not the actual words or melody, but the song as a whole, in a way. It was beautiful and haunting and funny and strange.
It felt almost like I had made it up myself, but neither of us had, so instead it felt like a thing we had been sharing without knowing it for all the years before, even the years before the song was written.
It made me cry, at first. And then laugh, in disbelief, in joy — and also because it was genuinely so, so funny.
And sad things that are also funny are the best things, I think.
I couldn’t believe it was real. That this person who I had been sharing, separately, what felt like all of my life with, had written this letter and sent me this song. I couldn’t believe I had never heard it until this moment, sitting in my childhood bedroom, up so late, the quiet dark somehow flooded with light.
P.S. The song? It’s “My Body’s a Zombie for You” by Dead Man's Bones — a song written for the soundtrack of a horror-musical “monster-ghost-love-story” that does not exist.
And the band: it’s just Ryan Gosling and Zach Shields. (I strongly recommend reading their Wikipedia page, which contains the sentence, “They discovered a mutual obsession with the Haunted Mansion ride at Disneyland.”)
They wrote the songs, they play every instrument (some they’d never played before), they sing together with the Silverlake Conservatory Children's Choir.
The whole album is croony and eerie, sweet and funny — but kind of undefinable.
Listen to it from start-to-finish and hear for yourself. You’ll know when you get to “My Body’s a Zombie for You.”
I do not like scary movies but man, do I love this song. Thanks, Peter. ◆
About Lee
Lee Havlicek is a producer, writer, and actor working in video, film, and theater. She is co-founder of Full Moon Films, a production company and artist collective of women creators; Video Producer at Fast Company and Inc. magazines; and Producing Director of Double Feature, a New York-based theater company staging classic works through intimate, site-specific staging and contemporary reinterpretation.
Instagram @leehavlicek
It was January 31st
I’d moved to New York on January 11th. I was 20 years old and it was my 21st day of living in my new home.
In a different January five years before, I went to my first concert at Terminal 5. Now, it was January again and I was headed back. This time to see The Vaccines, an English indie rock band whose music was loud and rowdy and sounded the way I felt inside.
I’d arrived in the city in a vulnerable state. New beginnings are always hard, especially when they’re preceded by a finite ending. The life I’d lived before had failed, and my heart was invested in this fresh start.
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