Storms--Finding Solace in Stevie Nicks
Photo and visual by Vivian Chambers
“Storms” by Fleetwood Mac became my favorite of their songs the first time I heard it. Though it’s completely buried amongst the massive double album Tusk, it may be one of Stevie Nicks’ most heartbreaking pieces. It acts as a one-sided conversation, presumably referencing her affair with Mick Fleetwood and relationship with Lindsay Buckingham. The song is simply composed, instead relying on lyrics and melody to deliver its sentiment of love and heartache.
When I first heard “Storms,” I found it deeply comforting despite being filled with a sense of desperate longing. And imagine, this was before I played it driving home from my first breakup. As I took the long way down Main St., I felt aware but heavy-hearted. I had just said goodbye to the people I spent every weekend night with for the last four years. The only person I have called my boyfriend now with an added prefix of “ex.” I wasn’t running away but reluctantly leaving it all behind, embarking on the first move of my young adult life.
But as I drove, Stevie said to me “As you slowly go away from me/ This is only another test.”
It’s hard to admit the event of change, especially when that change results in the departure of loved ones. Knowing that even though they may remain, it will never be quite the same as it once was. After all, things have changed, even if hopefully for the better.
In the second verse, Stevie steps back enough to ask “Did I ever really care that much?”
I love when a song contradicts itself. When the speaker takes a moment to propose a reality check, even if only fleeting, as to loosen the grip of an acute perspective.
It’s a very bold move for a song about heartbreak to question the legitimacy of the speaker’s (or one’s own) feelings. But for me, as I move onto this next stage of my life, the question acts more as a reflective statement which I will hopefully one day return to. It’s challenging to separate from the present when this present is all you have known. Of course I do care, so much that it hurts. But just imagine all the new things to care about that will one day solidify this present as nothing more than sugar-sweet nostalgia.
I don’t know a better feeling than a song aligning with a moment’s emotional outburst so impactfully that for a second, it seems like the song was written with you in mind. I had that moment with “Storms,” wondering how a woman could so easily spew my turmoil no less than forty years and half the country removed. It’s the gift of music, of poetry, of art. Our pain and our joy has been documented for centuries, it’s just up to us to look around and recognize that we all go through this crazy world together.
As the namesake of the song is divulged as a final confession, I saw lightning flash through the skyline of the only home I’ve ever known. What does it mean to be a storm? Is a storm a figure of the untamed, wild, unpredictable? Does it haunt the sky with trouble or ultimately lead to a rainbow? I don’t know the exact answer but when Stevie reveals that she has been one forever, I know I always have as well.