This piece originally appeared in The Threepenny Review.

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There’s a video on YouTube called

Peter Gabriel–Solsbury Hill (Live

DNA), in which Peter Gabriel sings

that signature song, but with a trick to

it. The video is a montage of concert

performances from 1978, 1987, 1993,

2011, and 2013. Because the audio is

one continuous recording and the video

editing seamless, the younger Gabriels

and the older ones change places fluid-

ly, slipping back and forth across those

thirty-five years. In the early shows he’s

a lithe rock star, line-dancing with his

band members. In a later performance,

bald and bigger in body, he rides a bicy-

cle around the stage, a grin gathering

force on his face as he sings.

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The tune of “Solsbury Hill” is sim-

ple, and the story is, too: a young man

stands on a hill, looking down at city

lights, as a voice out of nowhere says,

Grab your things, I’ve come to take

you home. “My heart going boom

boom boom,” the singer says, he

decides to leave the rut of his existence

and find a place in the world. Not a

new tale, but he sings it into life.

 

The video montage doesn’t feel like a

gimmick. It feels like a corollary to the

lyrics, demonstrating that their mean-

ing may have changed over time, for

Gabriel as well as his audience. In the

song’s own narrative, a boy on the

brink of adulthood decides to walk

down into the city and get started. At

the time of the earliest performance on

the video, it could be Gabriel’s declara-

tion of artistic freedom—“Solsbury

Hill” was his first single as a solo act

after eight years in the prog-rock band

Genesis. There were songs like

“Steam” and “Biko” ahead, and a bril-

liant score for Martin Scorsese’s The

Last Temptation of Christ, but

“Solsbury Hill” is where that phase of

his life begins. Then there are the later

performances, and that grin. I don’t

think he added the bicycle because he

was tired of the song.

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This June, my average resting heart

rate doubled suddenly for no apparent

reason. My EKG was “abnormal.” My

doctor ordered tests, including the one

where you run to exhaustion on a

treadmill, your heart going boom

boom boom, while you’re hooked up

to God’s own Heathkit. “You must be

wondering why your body’s betraying

you,” the cheerful nurse in charge of

the testing said.

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When all this came up, I was resent-

ful to the point of cliché, thinking,

“But I’ve taken such good care of

myself, blah blah blah.” Like Peter

Gabriel, I heard a voice out of

nowhere, but mine said, “Please.

You’re at the age for scares and tests.

Let me paraphrase David Mamet here:

You think you’re different? Nobody’s

different.”

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My doctor said that while waiting

for test results I should go on living

normally, including exercise. I started

tentatively, with an indoor bicycle ride.

I had been watching action thrillers

during those, in an attempt to speed up

my heart rate, but clearly that wasn’t

the ticket anymore. Instead I put on

one of those Steve Coogan–Rob

Bryden Trip to movies. In my present

context that was an action thriller,

because they kept making it to the next

hotel all right.

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I Googled, judiciously (“Impending

doom feels like—?”). There were many

possible causes for my symptoms, from

overactive thyroid to an enlarged heart.

“That’s what I’ve always said about

you,” Steve Coogan would have said if

he were here. “A heart as enlarged as

all outdoors.”

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When searching proved pointless, I

went back to the Peter Gabriel video,

with special attention to those later

performances. At sixty-three, his age

in the 2013 version, he’s old enough for

Grab your things, I’ve come to take

you home to have a new meaning.

What sticks out in that version is his

expression of glee as he finishes riding

around the stage. It suggests that he’s

had more rewards in life than he can

count and that they’re all his to keep,

even the semi-tangible.

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As it turns out, my condition is not

fatal. There’s a pill, of course, one

that’s taken by millions of people. You

can see some of those people on TV,

eating ice cream near gazebos as a

voice out of nowhere says, “Tell your

doctor if you have dry mouth.”

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I’m hoping to get used to scares, and

to the fresh perceptions and resolutions

that come with them. I was already a

sentimental sap for daily life, but being

a bigger one is fine. And I’m more

attached than ever to that “Solsbury

Hill” video, to how that dreaming lad

of sixty-three shows us—if only in a

wish, in a song—the self-possession it

takes to hear I’ve come to take you

home and answer Right. Just let me

get my bicycle.