It's rounding 6 on a Friday and we're deflated by the week when my coworker, Flossie*, brings up the trailer to Ricki and the Flash.
In a scene when Meryl Streep, an aging rock star, is performing at her daughter's wedding, Flossie points to the guitarist by her side and asks: 'Is that the 'Jesse's Girl' guy?"
"You mean Rick Springfield, Floss." I clarify, a slight whiff of defense. "The man that could have been my father."
It's an alternate universe exaggeration -- but Rick Springfield and my mom dated for 5 years after she befriended him in an acting class. In fact, the two were set to play the leads in a 1981 horror film together but he dropped out when they split up.
Who stepped in to replace him?
The man that did, in fact, become my father.
***
The horror film in question is Scared to Death --- a title I find apt as my catalyst in that I've spent a good 65 percent of my life in acute anxiety, and I stave that off from killing me by a pretty dedicated mental health regime.
There are, just guesstimating, 25 VHS copies left in this world, but the movie can be found on the Internet if one digs deep. As can, Google reveals, film stills of my thoroughly divorced parents open mouth kissing. These I send to my brother and sister-in-law with subject line: "Ew" and attach the Ricki and the Flash trailer. "Should we email for premiere tix?"
While he may have been influenced at the time, my father once sited "S.T.D" (heh) as the beginning of the end. While artistic careers are what both of them wanted, worked towards and planned for -- neither of them work in creative fields anymore.
Both dreamers and deeply expressive people, they instilled in me a somewhat conflicted hunger for the creative life.
**
A Rick Springfield Wiki read through reveals to me he has and continues to have a more extensive career than I was aware, and always in the arts.
But a peppering of his creative and pop cultural doings:
He's recorded 17 studio albums, 2 top 10
He continues to write, record and tour
He won a Grammy.
He knew my Grammy.
He had a Saturday morning TV cartoon, for which he wrote all the songs.
He's been on Broadway.
He was on General Hospital.
He's on True Detective.
He's kissed Streep, possibly with tongue.
He has a popular cruise that is him themed.
He's written 2 books.
But can he cook?
The last time I saw Rick myself, who remains a Davidson family friend, was in 2009 in Chatsworth, California in the stockroom- turned-green room of a Barnes and Noble. He was promoting an album of children's lullabies.
To me, it could have been backstage on the School's Out tour.
**
I'm also aware Rick has had a long struggle with depression. He speaks of it publicly, and while he's had a myriad of successes, his career has been, to quote the late F. Mercury, no bed of roses. No pleasure cruise.
This he detailed in his autobiography Late, Late At Night. After describing his teenage suicide attempt, he writes later about the battling voices in his head:
There is another voice in my head as well. And this one isn't quite so gung-ho for me to wake up and aim higher. I know him as the Darkness, and he is the voice of my lifelong depression. While the guy with the microphone is encouraging me to get off my ass and do something, the Darkness is whispering a sentiment that is altogether different. "What's the point, Sport?"
The link between creativity and mental illness is a long one, and the doubt and struggle he speaks of certainly hits home. I myself have contended with depression, substance abuse, and a variety of other mental debacles. Any of those things have the habit of feeling like an impossible hindrance to creative pursuits, as can, on the flip-side, the energy it takes to maintain health and sanity. It can all make doubt loom very large.
So what is it about Rick, for example, that made his career continue on, despite his demons, to have such consistent creative output after all these years?
I decide to ask the man himself. I get his email address from mom to ask for a chat, to which he kindly replies, "when's good for you?"
**
AK: What keeps you going despite your doubts and struggle with depression?
RS: I've had a lot of doubts about myself and always have... I think every artist does. Truly, my most positive trait is that I am bullheaded persistent.
I've heard this so many times-- talent won't win... the only thing that wins is persistence. If my life has shown me one thing, it's that. Even when faith in yourself fades.
There is this saying, something like 'the road to success is littered with geniuses.. .who gave up too soon...and the mountain top is filled with numb-nuts who didn't know when to quit.
AK: And you haven't given up on creating.
... I guess you make giving up not an option. The only time I thought maybe this music thing is not working out, that maybe I will try something else, is when I first got into acting.
I was over in America, hadn't made any money. Had 3 failed albums, I split up with managers. I was very, very lonely and a stranger in a strange land--- and then I went to acting class where I met your mom and your uncle Doug.
And that changed my life ...because I needed family at that point. It was a saving grace for me, and it was offered to me only because I stuck it out.
AK: What's success to you?
RS: Reaching goals you set, though, that's a pretty nebulous kind of a thing... but I'm a supporter of setting up really clear goals. For me it's doing something I like, creating something, and having an audience there to accept it. A lot of my self worth comes from achieving stuff. Getting a song on the radio, being on TV, those are the wins for me, and to have done it despite (all the difficulties). But I can feel successful when I finish a song that could go nowhere... just seeing something through to the end.
AK: Did having commercial success change your attitude towards your work?
RS: It didn't change my attitude towards my art... but I guess success had an effect in that I felt I had to prove myself... now that I was on the map so to speak. Critics weren't very kind to me in the beginning. They thought I was a teen idol. So after writing 300 crappy songs, I realized I could say something personal...That's the power of writing, what you bring to it personally.
AK: Do you still think it's the most worthwhile thing you can do?
RS: I think art can heal people, unite people. I can't count the number of times a song has made me feel better, in a way that nothing else makes it feel better...it just hits you in a spot that nothing else does.
AK: How did the opportunity for Ricki and the Flash come about?
RS: I was not the first person on the list. There are a lot of actors who can play the guitar, believe it or not. Again, though, just sticking in there, I'm still always working on things, making music, and performing -- and I guess it showed, that after all these years I continued to do the work.
But it's not like you get a part and then you're golden... I've gone in for things after that and fallen on my face.
But I'm in the game. And I'm staying in there.