The River...on Fire

Spotify prepared a playlist for me that marries acapella pop songs from Pentatonix with Christian rock from The 77s. In the mostly Christian music mix are indie songs from Tonio K, 90s Christian pop from Cindy Morgan and 80s Christian blue-eyed soul from Mylon Lefevre. And there’s Leslie Phillips and Nichole Nordeman, and then more Pentatonix. I don’t listen to as much commercial Christian music as I used to, and I’m not sure about Spotify’s algorithmic rationale, but I’m not mad. I only skipped a few songs.

I listened this morning as each of those artists sang. And then out of the blue, I hear this piano and strings intro, and the tear ducts well up. No words yet. No conscious association, just a feeling and automatic physical reaction. Something in my subconscious and in my body remembers. It’s “The River” by Rich Mullins. I am barely listening to the lyrics, but the reaction is uncontrollable. 

Maybe because I had already read in the morning that today, March 20, 2020, is the 20th anniversary of Gene Eugene’s death. Gene and his inimitable band, Adam Again, could have been in this unusual mix.

I know that associating “The River” with an entirely different musical entity seems like a non sequitur, but tell that to my body, which knows certain things. It knows that next month marks 20 years for my dad. So Gene’s passing is forever attached to Dad’s. And to Rich’s.

Favorite memories of my childhood include hours of sitting in the family room with Dad and my brothers listening to music. With music there was little generation gap in our household. We listened to entire album after entire album. Mostly soul and jazz, but occasionally rock or country or classical made the playlist. And gospel. Dad was a non-church-goer, who maintained a residual affection for gospel music from his childhood. He was completely unschooled in Contemporary Christian Music. On a drive from Denver to his home in Colorado Springs in the 1990s, I played "The River" and its album companions for Dad. I explained that I had actually sung on the collection, The World as Best as I Remember It, Vol. 1. Maybe my body is remembering that road trip with Dad.

Twenty years ago, when I learned of Gene’s passing, I immediately thought of Rich’s death three years earlier. It was a traffic accident on the open road. Another road trip. In my mind’s 2020 retrospective, the song “The River” foreshadowed Rich’s death. 

“Maybe she can come to Wichita. And maybe we can borrow Beaker’s bike. Let the road wind tie our hair in knots. Let the speed and the freedom untangle the lines. Maybe fear can vanish before love. O God, don’t let this love be denied.” 

Rich sang those words through Spotify this morning. And I wept, remembering that I haven’t listened to much Rich Mullins in years. 

Spotify could not have known that the first song in my brain this morning was “River on Fire,” from Gene Eugene from his band's release Dig. A Facebook friend had posted video for the song in honor of Gene’s anniversary. The words came straight to my mind:

“I could be happy, and you could be miserable. I’ll pull a metaphor out of the air: the Cuyahoga River on fire.” 

He refers to the infamous oil slick fire near Cleveland, Ohio in 1969. While Rich’s Wichita river longs for anticipated love, Gene’s Cleveland river laments a burned out love.

I am happy in love, but I am not above Rich’s longing or Gene’s lament, even if prompted by Spotify’s algorithms. Somehow my body still knows.