Episode 7
(Episode title: Free Will)
“Place to Be,” by Nick Drake (1972)
Played three times during episode 7. "Place to Be" plays during the scene in which Bella gets a birthday gift from her mom. It plays again in the scene in which Will writes a poem about Carolyn and in the following scene in which Bella, rowing on the lake with Sean, tells him that Scout is her brother. It plays a third time in the scene in which Bella bathes in the lake and Scout gives her her mom’s address.
When I was younger, younger than before
I never saw the truth hanging from the door
And now I'm older see it face to face
And now I'm older gotta get up clean the place.
And I was green, greener than the hill
Where the flowers grew and the sun shone still
Now I'm darker than the deepest sea
Just hand me down, give me a place to be.
And I was strong, strong in the sun
I thought I'd see when day is done
Now I'm weaker than the palest blue
Oh, so weak in this need for you.
Comment: The first line of this song’s lyrics, “When I was younger than before,” resonates with the drama’s themes of moral and emotional rebirth and rejuvenation. The song plays during the last of Young Americans’ symbolic baptisms – Bella’s, and during the events leading up to it. Only after she tells Sean what he needs to know to keep him from misunderstanding and hating Scout, namely that Scout may be her half-brother, does she get the immersion in the lake that symbolizes her purgation.
“From the Morning,” by Nick Drake (1972)
Played in episode 1 while Scout takes Bella out riding on his bike for their first date, and in episode 7 during the scene in which Bella and Scout discuss Bella’s relationship with her mom.
The lyrics of "From the morning" are given on the "Episode 1" page of the "Songs" subsection of the "Music of YA" section of this site.
Comment: In Young Americans, Drake's "From the Morning" is used only for the Bella-Scout storyline, once near its start, once near the end of the drama. In its second use, the aptness of the lyrics to the context is evident. In the night of being Bella's putative half-sibling, he can still make use of the affection for her that he developed as her lover, still "play the game that he learnt from the morning."
“So Little,” written by Luke Ehret and Margot Paige, performed by Idol (on their album, Idol, 1999)
Played during the scene in which Hamilton suggests to Jake that he move into her room. This is the last of three songs played by Idol (along with "Opened Eyes" and "The One") in the soundtrack of YA.
A 2.9 MB MP3 file of this song is accessible from the bottom of this webpage.
You ask me what I need,
you beg me to receive
compliments that failed long ago.
I don't have time for this.
I'm losing patience.
But there is this one thing you should know:
I could spend my whole life
crawling in and out your door,
though every minute proves
this means so little to you.
You ask me if I think
you really love me,
but never understand when I say no.
I don't have words for this.
Unable to express
the reasons why I still won't let this go,
I could spend my whole life
crawling in and out your door.
I pretend I am blessed,
although I know I deserve more.
Each night I make believe
tomorrow offers something knew
Though every minute
proves this means so little to you
Comment: These lyrics are a plaintive expression of unrequited love. Even if one views Hamilton's behavior in episode 7 (and at the restaurant in episode 6) as being merely what it looks like, this song's use during a Jake-Hamilton scene must be viewed as contrastive rather than illustrative of their interaction. Even at their worst moments, neither Jake nor Hamilton doubts the other's love, or would claim to "deserve more."
The even more jarring contrast is between the sentiment expressed by these lyrics -- "I deserve more" -- and the emotional tone of Young Americans. Nobody in Young Americans ever claims to deserve anything. At the outset, it's made clear that Rawley, "the perfect people, the perfect life," is past our power to "deserve." The point is underscored by the best line of the cotillion episode: "Grace is Grace," a pretty clear allusion to Providence. Will's last words in the drama are that life, all of it, is a gift: "We aren't just given life experience -- we're given the experience of life."
Hearing lyrics like these at Rawley is shocking. Perhaps that's the point - to make us reflect on how good these kids are. Hamilton, Scout, Will, Sean, Lena, Bella and Caroline are saints. Jake's wounded but has huge potential. Paige seems a decent person despite her repugnant style. Kyle Stratton is merely rude and inconsiderate. Even Ryder's malice seems diabolically selfless -- he would never say "I deserve more."
“There’s a Drug,” by Kari Wuhrer (on her album, Shiny, Del-Fi Records, 1999)
Played during Jake’s visit to Bella’s gas station, when Bella tells Jake she has seen that Jake’s a girl, immediately after Jake has rejected Hamilton’s suggestion that he move into her room.
There's a drug that's killing me
And a drug that's killing you
There's a drug that we can't see
One we can't abuse.
I look at the 70's
When life was so free
You could give love like a flower
Make love every hour.
Now it's not so true
There's a drug that we can't use
Ah ...
When I look into your eyes
I can see you slowly dying
And I don't know if I'm trying
Or doing everything
I can only sing
There's a drug that we can't use
And I don't know why it's missin'
I only want to be kissin'
All of me all over you
I look at the 70's
When life was so free
You could give love like a flower
And make love every hour
Now it's not so true
There's a drug that we can't use
And I don't know why it's missin'
I only want to be kissin'
All of me all over you
Comment: Wuhrer's 1999 song, comparing contemporary sexual mores with those of the 1970s,resonates with the drama's many suggestions that Will, the narrator, was young in the 1970s, despite dreaming himself back to school to rejuvenate morally and emotionally in 2000. It suggests that Will feels sorry for kids in 2000 for having less sexual freedom that he did when he was young.
However, if one fails to understand that Will-as-narrator is a mature man, not the teen he's pretending to be in his dream, then the primary reference of the song's use seems to be to Jake and Hamilton, because it's played during a Jake-Bella scene immediately after Jake has told Hamilton that she's not ready for him to move in with her. Understood in that context, the use of Wurher's song seems to suggest that Hamilton's wanting to move in with Jake, and Jake's rejection of it, is about sex. That seems so wrong that the song's use is jarring. Its clear that neither Jake nor Hamilton is sexually frustrated, precisely because they've been hanging out together in her single room as much as possible for three weeks, even though they're not having intercourse yet. What Jake says she isn't ready for, and what Hamilton later apologizes for having pushed her toward, seems likely to be total loss of privacy. Why Hamilton suggests that he move into her room seems deliberately ambiguous, but it seems triggered by Ryder's harassment, not by any sexual dissatisfaction in his relationship with Jake.
Moreover, if Wuhrer's song is taken to refer to its immediate dramatic context, namely the Jake-Hamilton storyline, rather than to Will's dreamy generation-hopping, then its use seems to suggest that more sex could solve all of Jake's and Hamilton's problems. That's ludicrous. No amount of sex will solve the problem of how these lovers can stay together while letting Jake stop pretending to be a boy. That's a practical problem, not an emotional one. And even though Jake and Hamilton never talk about it, it's the Sword of Damocles hanging over Jake and Hamilton from the moment he learns that she's a girl. Krudski's narrative homily about the imperative to "be yourself" at the end of episode 4, as Jake and Hamilton arrive together (and late) for their first post-cotillion literature class, pointedly foreshadows that the drama must end with Jake's departure from Rawley, so that she can "be herself." Leave she must; but when and how she leaves, how far she must go, and how long she must stay gone, are all things they can try to control. That's a primary albeit veiled reference of the Finn's on-the-lake homily about knowing the difference between what we can change and what we can't change, from which episode 7 takes its punning name.
In sum, the use of this song in Young Americans seems a bit impish. If seems to punish those viewers who, in episode 7, still don't understand how good Will is, by making them take the song as a suggestion that Hamilton is less good than he clearly is. By episode 7, there's a sharpness to the show's nudging of viewers to understand that Will is not really a kid narrating about present events from the present. We're six episodes past cute hints like: "Bell-bottoms to straight-legs and back again?" ... "Thirty years."
“Pink Moon,” by Nick Drake (1972)
Played in episode 1 during Will's opening narrative comment, in which, writing under a tree by the lake, he tells viewers he's about to go to Rawley, and during the first non-narrative scene, in which Scout bicycles into Bella’s gas station. Played again later in episode 1, during the scene in which Finn catechizes and baptizes the JD rowing crew. Also played during the final the scene of episode 7, Bella’s sixteenth birthday party.
Along with "Over the Rainbow" as sung as sung by Israel Kamakawiwio'ole and "Goodbye" by The Crash Poets, "Pink Moon" is one of three songs that "frame" Young Americans, played in episode 1 or at the start of episode 2, and again either in episode 8 (the last episode) or at the end of episode 7.
While Bella's birthday party unfolds and "Pink Moon" plays, we hear the voice-over narrative comment with which Will Krudski closes "Free Will":
"When exactly do we go from being kids to being just people? I'm not sure. I do know it's not about turning a certain age or graduating from school. It happens when you're not paying attention. ... Without our knowledge or consent, childhood slips away, and our innocence escapes us, and we wake up one morning to find we have become who we are."
I saw it written and I saw it say
Pink moon is on its way
And none of you stand so tall
Pink moon gonna get you all
It's a pink moon
It's a pink, pink, pink, pink, pink moon.
Comment: This is the lead song on the last album that Drake released before ending his life at age 25 in 1974. AllMusic’s reviewer calls it “the bleakest of them all” in an album of “elegant melancholia.” Almost like a siren-song, its haunting instrumental beauty overshadows, and lulls the listener into ignoring, the ominous lyrics, "pink moon gonna get you all." Young Americans's repeated use of this song, including to open the drama, underscores its emotional seriousness, including Will's moral earnestness in "going to Rawley" and the high stakes in the Jake-Hamilton storyline.
In episode 7, this song is played during the scene following which (it is implied) Will loses his virginity to Caroline, thereby helping her keep a faith in love that Ryder had tried to destroy. Will helps Carolyn avoid the despair of love from which Hamilton must save Jake. The “sixteenth birthday party” setting underscores the "loss of innocence" theme. (Sixteen is the age of consent in Massachusetts, the drama’s ostensible place-setting, as Bella makes clear at the start of episode 4 by telling Sean that her dad's in Boston to renew his business license).
Ironically, however, the "childhood" or "innocence," our loss of which Will regrets, is not sexual virginity - losing that is part of life, part of growing, as Will affirms by starting to lose his during this scene. It is, rather, humility - the child-like awareness that we are not what we should be, that we need to keep on growing, keep on learning to love better. It escapes us when we stop paying attention to what really matters - loving one another, helping one another grow. When we do that, when "we wake up one morning to find we have become who we are" - no longer becoming but just being, bereft of dreams and possibilities - then the "pink moon" of complacency starts to kill us emotionally.
In Krudski's narrative rhetoric, we stop being kids and start being "just people" not when we reach "a certain age" but when we stop growing emotionally and morally. The metaphor is the same one used in the synoptic gospels' language about the need to become like little children in order to enter the Kingdom of God. In the rhetoric of Young Americans, salvation from the emotional death of complacency can still be had, despite the failure of tradition, by "going to Rawley," by dreaming dreams that are "worthy of us," that affirm the possibility of true love and the need to grow to practice it. In the words of Finn's catechism on the lake, when we listen to "the lake," which Will identifies with "history" - the inadequacy of which he connotes with an image of blueberry pie vomit - "the sound [we] should be hearing is opportunity. Exceed expectations: make the most of it."
Ichabod Grubb
Created: April 2014
Last updated: April 2014