sure. wait. what?

“KANINONG COVER ‘yan?” my college roommate N asked while The Chicks’ Landslide was playing from my laptop speakers.

We were in our small one-bedroom apartment then, long before The Chicks dropped Dixie from their name. I was working on the table while N and her boyfriend were sitting on the futon a foot away, also absorbed in their own computers.

“Cover ba ‘to?” I asked N back. “I think ito ‘yung original.”

“Hindi ba Smashing Pumpkins?”

“Hindi ba mas matanda ang Dixie Chicks sa Smashing Pumpkins?”

“Ewan ko lang…”

We learned from Google that neither of us were right. Landslide was originally by Fleetwood Mac, a band that I did not yet know at that time, and whose workplace romance-cum-kalat had not yet occupied a spot in my mental real estate. The Smashing Pumpkins’ cover was also released before The Chicks’, so I was pretty much wrong on all counts.

“Never ko pa narinig ‘yung sa Smashing Pumpkins,” I told N. “Maganda?”

“Maganda,” N said. “Mas malungkot kaysa dito sa Dixie Chicks. Paulit-ulit kong pinakinggan ‘yun noong nag-break kami ni A.”

Hmm, interesting. My brain buffered like a video on dial-up speed until it finally loaded my thoughts: “Alam mo never ko naisip na malungkot ‘tong kantang ‘to.”

“Parang hindi nga malungkot ‘yang version na ‘yan,” N said. “‘Yung sa Pumpkins halos umiyak na ‘yung vocalist e.”

“Ito parang…parang mas hopeful ‘no?”

“Oo nga. Hopeful nga.”

Even now, many years and a couple heartbreaks later, I still don’t associate The Chicks’ version of Landslide with anguish. I think of it as a song about transitions, as in Coming of Age, as in that propitious moment when you find yourself in front of an inevitable forked road. Time makes you bolder / even children get older / and I’m getting older too. Maybe because I’m the type who’s generally fixated on quote growing up unquote that I consider this song a lovely soundtrack to my life in perpetual transit.

But I also completely agree with N that the Smashing Pumpkins’ cover punches that tender spot beneath the rib cage, pushing a raw howl up your throat. I’ve been ‘fraid of changing / coz I’ve built my life around you. The crossroads is less auspicious in this reading, and the prickle of hesitation presses heavily on the persona’s feet. Change, after all, often pits necessity against desire, causing a sense of immense distress, ergo landslide. I see it. I get it.

Then again, a song can be both hopeful and sad at the same time. Joni Mitchell once said this about Both Sides Now: “In its generalness, there was much that people could read into. It became very profound in its ambiguity to a lot of people.”

It’s true for most/all art, isn’t it? Art is a flame that casts different shadows; it just depends where you stand.

When I was in my 20s and floating aimlessly in the ocean of existential angst (as one does at that age), I used to think that Death Cab for Cutie’s Your Heart Is an Empty Room was one of the saddest songs ever written. Now that I have a relatively more grounded approach to (philosophizing) life, I listen to this song and hear the cheerier side. The possibilities sing louder than the emptiness this time.

I am a lot less sad now, I suppose. I am growing. If only I could comfort my younger self, I would. Hang in there, kid. And trust: you can definitely handle the changing ocean tides.