California Free: Fondly Remembering Phantom Planets

Review: Then

Being young and alive before the shores of its quintessential ocean.

Off the bat, that’s what the song ‘California’ by Phantom Planet sounds like, and no doubt was a shared image when it first came out amidst a wave of others akin to it.

The early 2000s, positively overrun with burgeoning alternative rock and pop punk bands, maintained an audible theme of youth that was unrestrained, misunderstood, or bound under confines that they sang would not keep them down for long.

But this track in particular better identified itself as already being unbound.

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“We’ve been on the run,

Driving in the sun, 

Looking out for number one.

California, here we come – 

Right back where we started from…”

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In fact, they were headed somewhere, and with such anticipation that lead vocalist Alex Greenwald felt the need to sing it rather than just relay it. As a result, of both the lyrics and the production that envelopes it, what hit in great waves as one would listen to it was the sound of the outro to a film, practically, or at least the conclusion of a journey wherein all we had endured as an audience was hardship and heartache – two attributes that are most tantamount in a life so young and new.

Without either, ‘California’ and all it entails would not feel and sound as it does – full of wonder and hope that only an expectant positivity for better things to come could foster. 

For me, someone who often leaned towards the negative so as to spare me the grief of blind faith (and all that may come crashing down because of it), such a song was a rare exception to my usual playlist of all things then devastatingly emo and angsty. To my love for all that was shadowed over and dark, it was dewy and bright, with the scent of ocean water that I’ve never smelled, but heard plenty tell of its whimsy. Being a midwestern kid of budding teenhood, a place like California was not so much fake as it was overhyped, overpriced, and if not anything else, too far to reach.

Little did I know how relevant of a belief that would become in the long run, when even entertaining the idea of a place so teeming with possibilities as well as sun rays would feel so painfully distant, that I would inevitably conclude that it is something I could never get to.

Backstory: Back Then

It was Lindsey or Chelsea, or rather, just something that relayed the slight masculine nature that hung about her like a coat she loved, instead of the similar scrubs we both wore. 

And I knew it well then. At least, well enough to throw it her way whenever I shuffled along the same splotchily lighted hallway as her, or when I would later greet her at breakfast. Then lunch, then dinner; and so forth.

In such a setting as a psych ward, I hurriedly held on to something as human as the name of an equally downtrodden patient that I felt drawn to. So perhaps, one could imagine my frustration – here and now, as I sit and attempt to recall – at the fact that for the life of me, I cannot remember her name. 

But I can remember the name of the song that brought us together: ‘California’.

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“Pedal to the floor,

Thinkin’ of the roar, 

Gotta get us to the show.

California, here we come –

Right back where we started from…”

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I was no stranger to it. In fact, as irony would have it at that time, the song had returned to my sudden nostalgic rotation of tracks that brought back good memories. Not that I lacked or hadn’t any of the latter to begin with. I was just thoroughly convinced around then that I had no right to remember them. And nor can I remember why I felt that way, either. I just did.

Such is the lot of trying to shed your very treacherous late teenage angst in so little space. 

My failure to do so successfully landed me there as a consequence – at Saint Mary & Elizabeth’s Medical Centre, burrowed within the fourth floor female bloc that was then overflowing with a gentry that I had just as much in common with as I was afraid of to the core. 

In the moments where I feebly dialled it back, thus leaving on the surface a mousy-looking curiosity, I was fascinated by whoever I was brave enough to sit close to. And on that morning, it was she… Who I maddeningly cannot name.

So for now, I will call her California. The subject allows it.

She didn’t hum, but altogether actually loudly sang her namesake while diligently fussing with the drawstring of her pants. It was the middle of a group therapy session, and it was not received well. One lumbering patient of about 6 feet told her bluntly to shut up, while another either hissed or shushed quite venomously in response to her getting louder. The doctor at the helm of it all, meanwhile, completely ignored them. As did the majority of other souls who bothered to get up after 7 AM to join these morose festivities. 

I could not, however, ignore it – as I so suddenly discovered. In fact, while I withheld the urge to sing along with her, I quietly asked why she felt the need in the first place. Her response, paired with a crooked and yet toothy grin and a comically hushed tone to mimic mine, was that she was being released. Such was a time to celebrate. And that she did, and she this time not only continued to sing, but beat her hands against the table to join as percussion. 

Boldly, I clasped my own over hers, and implored her to tell me more; more about her release, on why she chose that song. Anything, so as not to remind me where I was, as well as not to get us in further trouble for conversing in the middle of an event marked as mandated.

I found myself not caring in that moment. I was well seated in the belief that I would remain there, between that rec room and my sterile quarters, for the foreseeable week. What was the threat of another day from lack of participation?

And who am I to dampen the hope of someone else?

So with her hand now gripping mine even tighter, she in proud secret told me in almost cinematic detail what the song meant to her, rather than the expected exposition of her reason for being here in the same hovel as I was.

The idea of sunny shores, welcoming heat in the then-cold climate, and the tingle of ocean water greeting one’s bare feet was far better to recall. Especially if you’ve technically never been there, from what California herself revealed.

But that surely didn’t stop her – it never did. It wasn’t so much about actually getting there, so much as it was about the absolute freedom to stretch your ambitions out like limbs fresh out of restraints, and believe that one day you could get there without anyone stopping you. 

That, she assured me, was precisely what freedom was: no one being able to stop you from doing what could very well be impossible. And nothing was impossible in that moment, wherein she was finally given her clothes from when she was first checked in, and two large, beaten, and brown shoes that looked like they had seen as many potentially treaded ventures to a place as far as her Utopia before.

As she scurried to tie them, now just humming the tune of the accompanying piano so as not to distract herself too much, the very idea of California in California projected itself like home movie footage against the blank backdrop of my mind, which was trying its hardest not to race, and thus summon tears. To imagine further ahead, where I myself could hear the swell of the song and its overflowing onslaught of hope, threatened to actually render me completely hopeless. 

And I dare not do that before the soaring spirits of California, the stranger, who then shrugged on a massive leather jacket and sprang out of her seat with a great leap. Going right back to singing the chorus, she continued to ignore the imploring of the therapist, who bade her be quiet, as well as the curse of the other patients, who more so wanted silence from everyone. Not just her alone. 

She pointed to me as if I had a cue, and before throwing caution to the wind and joining her, one of the more aggressive nurses on the floor piped in from the doorway and told her that all was in order and that she was free to go. 

I was to be alone from thereon out, only then remembering that I was from the very start. I had never truly had the company of California to begin with, nor the comfort of her song until now. Yet there I then began to tremble at the loss of her.

She saw this when she turned back to me, as if she was intent on saying goodbye to someone she too had just met. Instead of that, she just took back my hands in hers, squeezed them tightly, and then let go at the behest of the nurse who beckoned her, reminding us both that contact between any patient was frowned upon. 

She continued singing in response, louder and much more in tune than before; almost as if getting further and further away from the rec room, and the heart of this place and its gray nature, was refilling in her a sense of harmony and infectious melody that she had had before. She must have, I gathered – what with the way she spun her way past the makeshift checkpoint between the beginning of the bloc and the elevators leading down to the main hospital. 

I could not see as she inevitably entered one, but I sure did hear it, as the doors opened with a ding, and she called out from its confines that closed with a quiet hiss, thus muffling her ending high note, and leaving me with silence.

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“California!

California!

Here we come!”

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That is, it should’ve. The drone of the therapy session continued, a tad clearer now that its disruptor had left. 

And yet, all that I cared to hear was ‘California’, blaring so loud and triumphantly in my head that it spilled out in the form of me humming it under my breath.

Review: Now

Is it required – a certain amount of detachment to review a song that meant one thing at one point in time, and then something else so starkly different the next?

Perhaps they are not so different. To be young and alive – as aforementioned – and to be free in thought before free in being aren’t too separated in translations. 

But what is different from this vantage, where youth and living in the thick of it was all the rage, is that living in the thick of life in general is the greater purpose as a whole. 

And to do that is not so simple a task to perform. 

Living, singing in the midst of it, and overall existing is akin to a journey to California, which is a place still softly blanketed in a mythos of stress and troubles waded away with a compassionate tide. To get there is one thing – one of aging out of a culture of ideals and no cares for what is to come, for what is to come is a growing sunset that fills any disheartened gaze with an excitement that will welcome what comes after it: another day, with you still in California. 

One can carry that feeling with Phantom Planet, one supposes. Theirs is a track that has lasted. But we, as those who listened to it since, have grown up and are measuring how much farther and farther away California has gone. 

At the best of times, the song itself is a reminder that it is still there, still spewing its sun and still awashing its sandy threshold with its blue waters. And just as well, and to be fair, at its worst of times, it is only a song; one that gives a positively cruel image to what for some cannot be attained. 

At that very risk of wallowing, there will almost always be the most hopeful of times to combat it, where perhaps California indeed has not been reached… yet. And that ‘yet’ – joined with the likes of ‘California’, the song and the storied freedom of California, the stranger – is enough to get you tying your beaten brown shoes, throwing on your leather coat, and jumping up and out into the open world where there is such a place that, even after everything, still exists. And still calls.

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“On the stereo, 

Listen as we go,

nothing’s gonna stop me now.

California, here we come –

Right back where we started from…”