Buddy Holly lives

I began this blog on the week of February 3. It happened to be the forty-eighth anniversary of The Day the Music Died.
It is needless to say that I am a passionate Buddy Holly Fan. Have been since I was Eleven-years-old, not much more than twelve years ago. I have fond memories of listening to his songs repeatedly in the evenings after school.

Perhaps I should provide some background for how I found myself attracted to Buddy's music. As a child bearing the stigma of my troubled emotional and psychological state, I was socially unable to relate to my peers. As is often the case with children of higher intelligence, my advanced rate of maturity was my proverbial cross to bear. Such are the factors I attribute to my long history of clinical depression and destructive emotional behavior. I compensated for this condition with an outward resentment of the culture I grew up in, especially the current music scene. Popular music of the nineteen-nineties I treated as an abomination. I stewed in contempt for my peers, convincing myself of my superiority to them on every level, as it justified my growing alienation from them and gave me a reason not to make any effort to overcome it.

To me, Buddy's music has symbolized the world I idealized as an antidote to the clouded world in which I was living. I saw the music of the nineties as sexualized and unrepresentative of any respect for memories of love and discovery. Buddy's music, with its conveyance of those themes played into my fantasy of an age of innocence which I considered myself unfortunate not to have grown up during. His songs with lyrics such as, "it's so easy to fall in love," "words of love you whisper soft and true," "well alright, we'll live that love with all our might," and, "just you and I know true love ways" capture the themes of love and discovery absolutely dearly.

It can be said that I had bought into the false idol of the "innocent" nineteen-fifties that has been so tirelessly mythologized by reactionary conservatives today. True, I have matured enough over the years to recognize the fallacy of this mythical "world"; that it in no way represents the nineteen-fifties as a reality. I accept that the world I yearn for is false. All men and women cling to myth as a necessary departure from the harshness of reality. That is a universally known fact. We create alternate realities and we create heroes. We sustain our individual sanity through personal fantasy. Without it we would be unable to conduct our lives as there would be no unattainable world to strive for. Indeed, Cervantes knew whereof he spoke when he characterized Don Quixote as a man determined to "reach the unreachable star."

Human accomplishment depends on the unyielding belief in success against all odds. Let us stray from the subject for a moment to put this observation in context. A student, either at MIT, or submitting an essay for entry to the institute, writes of how Don Quixote eventually inspired him. By his admission, in his youth he had not been taken with the story, instead finding more in common with the world of Star Wars:

My little brother made me watch Star Wars with him and help him make model x-wings. I was enchanted by the Star Wars universe. It turned me into a romantic with all the possibilities it offered. The universe was so vast, unimaginably large, home to so many people I would never meet. Luke had proved that love could conquer hate, for people also were infinitely complex and always good at heart. To my mind the Star Wars universe surpassed Camelot in its grace, its valiance.

It seems natural that he would find himself willed to prefer a more contemporary fantasy sago that is more widely received among audiences over a five hundred-year-old Spanish literary classic. The label of sophistication that society places on classic works and the implication that one must be well versed in them to achieve that level of "respectability" is intimidating to the student that wishes to read for enjoyment. Society generally does not place this burden on a Star Wars fan. Often, one is drawn to greater appreciation of the classics when he stumbles upon them on his own time. Indeed this was the case with the writer here:

I was listening to a choir performance of "The Impossible Dream" a few months later, and my mind wandered on hearing the words: "To dream the impossible dream, to fight the unbeatable foe, to go where the brave dare not go. . . To reach the unreachable star." It was heartwarming to hear someone who shared my sentiments. I smiled. Perhaps it was foolish to live for Star Wars ideals in the practical world, foolish to dream of becoming a jedi knight, but it seemed noble to try anyway. I was awakened from this reverie by the host, who had been going into the history of the song and had just informed the audience that this song was taken from the play Don Quixote, Man of La Mancha.

It should be noted the writer's pattern of referring to his little brother's make-believe games of being a Jedi Knight in Star Wars. The little boy waved the plastic light saber around. This melted the writer. This, of course, shows how we externalize our fantasies in our relations with the people close to us. Children, of course, in their innocence, are the most obvious to embody these fantasies. As the consummate paragons of hope, they have that effect on us.

After getting his first light saber, my brother announced that he was going to be a jedi knight when he grew up. The thought filled me with longing� I wanted to be one too. It was not just a fancy, but a true desire� to be a jedi knight, to fight for peace and order, to explore the universe! But I realized how absurd that was, how impossible. It was just a story. The real world spoke against the goodness of people at heart, the existence of life outside earth.

Eventually, for the writer, his inevitable discovery of Don Quixote and his newfound glowing fixation on the story brings his fantasies (Star Wars) and the reality-based personification of his fantasies (his little brother). Following this, he is able to come to his inspired conclusion:

I understood then, what the man of La Mancha felt. And I secretly hoped that the someone, somewhere in the universe, who was looking for the unreachable star, would one day find it.


For myself and for millions of Americans, Buddy Holly has long since been an identifiable hero. This fact is confirmed by the faithful observance of the anniversaries of his passing along with Ritchie Valens and the Big Bopper. As this news coverage reports:

The Buddy Holly Center drew big crowds Saturday afternoon as fans and friends gathered to remember the anniversary of Buddy Holly's death, often referred to as the day music died.

It is of course, common knowledge that February 3, 1959, when a private plane crashed outside Clear Lake, Iowa is remembered as the Day the Music Died for its loss of three men who were without a doubt, the pioneers of rock 'n' roll. It is with the magical idea, the conviction that, "someone, somewhere in the universe, who was looking for the unreachable star, would one day find it".