Which, as so often in the adult world, leads to disappointment. Hence “Ballad of Reverend War Character,” whose lyrics consist almost entirely of brief, morbid character studies, zooming through entire lives as if skimming through the obits and skipping to the endings. In lieu of a chorus, he offers little pearls of wisdom after each verse. “In a horror movie when the car won’t start/You give it one last try,” goes one, returning to the feeling of terror that courses through the record. Another: “In space there is no center/We’re always off to the side.”
I’ve returned to this lyric many times, and I am always astounded by how much it conveys in so few words. There’s the rebuttal of a cliché—not only are we not the center of the universe, but there is no center at all. There’s also a seemingly teachable lesson, a way to ponder our insignificance that feels so particularly Berman that I imagine nobody else in the world could identify whether it was a source of comfort or anxiety to him. “Well, don’t believe in people who say it’s all been done/They have time to talk because their race is run,” he sang on 1994’s “Advice to the Graduate,” and here was his impetus for moving forward: to keep learning, to say something true.
At the very least, he was able to find a definition of success far from the goalposts he was raised with in Dallas. In a 1999 interview, he talks about the grim view of corporate adult life afforded to him by visits to his father’s notorious work in government affairs and PR. These characters and images would drift through his writing forever: the frosted bank glass, the buildings made of mirrors. “He put the fear into me early on… that I would live a life inside of those worlds,” Berman explains, “and I’ve been able to escape it so far… It’s a terrifying world.”
Maybe this is the world where the character in “Pretty Eyes” lives. Maybe it’s where the guy in “Inside the Golden Days of Missing You” is coming from before he gets to the bar. Maybe it’s what the narrator of “How to Rent a Room” is running from, imagining his death in the eyes of the people he once knew. In the following decade, Berman would find true love and religion, release an influential collection of poetry and several more beloved records, tour the world and meet people who found comfort and meaning in his work. Things, of course, would also get bad. But he tried to strike a balance. “There’s been moments where I felt aging was a process of decay,” he told Dolomite Magazine in 1999, “but the last few years have been the best of my life, and it seems to get better.” The Natural Bridge, in its stark and defenseless way, looks to the future with resistance and desperation. It awakens with a sense that life has begun.
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