I drove past my local polling place this morning.  The parking lot was full.  Campaign signs crowded the lawn on both sides of the drive way.  Now, at Starbucks customers come in with the conventional hint of a smile on their faces.  If they are like me they carry a suppressed sense of foreboding within.  Tonight the results of our vote will be announced to the nation.

Why would I write about a Rock and Roll song from the early 60s, Del Shannon’s Runaway?  It’s a breakup song.  The story is told from the viewpoint of the male, who is in shock. His emotional compass spins, in the aftermath of the departure of his sweetheart.  The words that leap out at me from the lyric are “wonder” and the interminable repetition of “why.”  These words strike me as the two poles of philosophy, of living a philosophical mode of existence.  With child-like curiosity one contemplates the world of nature, and of others.  One delights in discovery of the connections within Nature, the cause and effect that gives rise to beauty, and to life, and to death.  In this tune, our storyteller is compelled to ask “why” over and over, as he journeys on, bearing the burden of loneliness.  In time the answers will come, some of them.  With many miles of life’s journey behind us, we know this is so.  Perhaps our young storyteller does not yet know?

Runaway was a Billboard Hot 100 song written by Del Shannon and keyboardist Max Crook in 1961.  The song is 472 in Rolling Stone magazines top 500 songs of all time.  Del Shannon was the stage name of Charlie Westover born in Coopersville Michigan in 1934.  Max Crook loved to tinker with electronics and invented his own electronic keyboard, the precursor to the synthesizer, which he called a Musictron.  That’s Max playing the Musictron for the solo break in the lyrics.  Runaway was released in February of 1961 and was immediately successful.  It reached no 1 on the Billboard charts where it remained for 4 weeks.  The song became a global smash having sold as many as 80,000 singles per day at the height of the songs popularity.

There is more to this story.  Del Shannon wrote other songs: Hats off to Larry, Little Town Flirt, Handy Man.  Runaway was his biggest hit.  The last show that Del Shannon ever played was a Feb 3 concert in Fargo North Dakota. The  concert memorialized three of Shannon’s contemporaries, Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and J. P. “The Big Bopper” Richardson.  They died in a plane crash 31 years prior to that day.  Later that week Shannon’s wife found him in a rocking chair in their California home.  He was in his bathrobe and a 22 caliber gun was next to him.  He died of a self inflicted wound.  By all accounts his last performance was fantastic.  He was in fine voice at 55.  The hit Runaway would forever define him.  He was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1999, nine years after his suicide.

I feel grief for Del Shannon.  I feel sadness for all of us.  And yet, my definition of an ideal day is to be driving somewhere with all the windows rolled down, singing along with Del Shannon on the radio, Runaway.

POSTSCRIPT

The onset of crisis may prompt us to ask “why.”  Crisis comes in many forms: the state of our earth, the condition of our country, or the failure of a cherished relationship.