Sue's Last Ride

"Sue's Last Ride" by Dirty Three from Horse Stories

  

More than a lot of years ago I was at a rehearsal with a local singer/songwriter that I have played drums for on and off throughout the years. At the end of the rehearsal, said singer/songwriter handed me a CD and said "Have you heard of these guys? You've got to check them out. The Rolling Stones rated them as the best band in the world." To clarify that last statement, yes he did mean the band. I'm not sure where he got that information from, but apparently the Rolling Stones meant it. I should also state that he mentioned that as more of a note on where he got hip to them and not in an ultra Rolling Stones fan check out my lips tattoo kind of way.

The album was Horse Stories which I liked quite a lot, and this song jumped out at me right away as my favorite from the album. Fast forward a few years and I get to see Dirty Three at the Magic Stick in Detroit. For those that do not know the venue, the Magic Stick is one of those 'just small enough to have a bar, but not an upstairs' kind of places. If a group sells out a Magic Stick size venue, their next move is to an old church turned venue, and then to an old theater, etc. This place was pretty packed, and rightfully so, as the last time they were in the United States was seven years prior, when the guy that turned me on to them saw them at a now defunct venue by the name of Griff's Grill, which was a step or two down from the Magic Stick level in the venue food chain.

That night at the Magic Stick, Dirty Three performed "Sue's Last Ride." Warren Ellis, the violinist of the group, gave a similar speech to the one in the video above, but implied a bit more detail to the story. Sue was a friend who had died in a car and was there for two weeks before anyone found her. Ellis implied, or at least I took it, that Sue's last ride was those two weeks, alone in that car with nothing to do but atone for her life.

The song starts slowly, quietly, like you're waking up. Senses come into play, in and out, eventually they begin to focus. And then slowly, a realization that you are unsure where you are. Then you realize, you're in the car, which is perplexing. Your heart races for a moment. You're not sure why you're in the car. You take a deep breath to steady yourself, and then you realize, you're dead.

And you panic, and you can't breath, and you're not sure if you're supposed to breath, but it feels like your drowning, and eventually you realize that you're not going to die, because you're dead.

And then time starts to pass, and you start to remember, and it's hard, because inevitably it all leads up to right now. Every moment of it leads to now. And of course that means that some of it you'd rather not deal with even though those are the things you need to deal with.

And it builds, and it builds. It's like your past is tormenting you. Bigger and faster and more intense. Everything is flowing through you now. And just when you think you can't take it anymore, someone finds the car, and opens the door, and finds you, inside. dead.

And you get out of the car, and head on your way.

I don't know if Sue committed suicide. I kind of don't think so. I get the vibe that she had an accident and that she was hard to find. I however had a friend that did commit suicide in a car, so from time to time I think of him in relation to this song. I'm not a spiritual man, I do not believe in an afterlife, but, if I'm wrong, I would like to believe that people do have to atone for their life in a visceral painful way. I hope that we all have to face the parts of ourselves that we bury deep inside and build walls around, and I hope that if there is an afterlife we all enter it through catharsis and new without all the baggage we carry around during life.

As always feel free to comment here or send an email to suicidesongs@communistdaycarecenter.net