The Song that Changed my Life

Charlie No. 3 by the Whitlams

This would seem to be a topic for my other blog, Song of the Day, but you’ll soon see why I’m putting it here.

It’s March 2000. I’ve been encouraged by an online friend I’ve made to check out this Aussie band that is playing the club up the street from me. I did a quick search on them (remember, this is 2000!) so I had a sense of what I was walking into. A band that had won album of the year in Australia a couple of years earlier. Cool. They had just finished opening for Blue Rodeo on a cross-country tour, not a band I was into but one I didn’t mind. This was their only full set in Canada before going home. I’m about to go into rehearsals for a musical at the New Ideas Festival - a very short but intense time. So I figured, what the hell?

I had no idea what was about to happen to me.

The album the band was supporting, a special Canadian release featuring songs from both this album and the previous one.

I walk into the club and see this tall, weedy guy at the bar that I instantly recognize as the lead singer, Tim Freedman. He was paying rapt attention to the opening act, a sister duo called Tegan and Sara. He had a presence that was hard to look away from. Charismatic was the descriptor I had seen in everything I had read about him so I wasn’t surprised. He was interesting. I really like interesting.

Then the band took the stage and my world tilted on its axis. Screw charismatic, he was utterly magnetic. Charming, funny, relaxed, completely owning who he was and love for the music coming out of every pore. It would take me years to realize what I was experiencing in that moment was a awakening of the person I wanted to be. Unfortunately for Tim, it took me too long to discover it. In the moment, all I knew was that I was feeling a pull to him so intense it had to be a finding your soul mate moment.

And the music! They were a great sounding band but it was the lyrics that truly caught me. Tim has a way of looking at the ordinary and turning it into the most extraordinary phrase. I was enraptured.

And then they played Charlie No 3.¹

Wentworth Falls, which is the site of the tragedy that Charlie No 3 is about. Photo by Hamish Weir on Unsplash

Because we go back and back and back and back

This lyric would not leave me. They handed out a sample of tracks (can’t remember the format) and thank god this song was on it because I didn’t have any cash until payday and I needed to hear this song. I would sneak listening to it over and over at work over the next few days. I felt something glow in my solar plexus, something in me light up. Basically, I was obsessed in a way I hadn’t been before or since.

Weird things start to happen to me. Before this night, I had believed there was a logic to everything, feelings included. But logic wasn’t there. I felt I could connect to him across space, the awakening of my heart connection. I seemed to be able to predict things when it came to him. I joined the fan mailing list and that’s how I’d get confirmation as people would talk about happenings at various gigs.

A month in, I made a choice. Either let go of trying to find explanations or go crazy. So I let go. And that became the start of the spiritual path I’m on now.

A month after that, I’m at the Theatre Passe Muraille Backspace, waiting for the set of a show I was directing to arrive. I throw on Eternal Nightcap in the booth. We get to Charlie No 3 and I start seeing a scene playing out on the stage. The Backspace has a railing along the right side. I see a spinning dancer in the middle in a spotlight, arms out. On the railing, I see another dancer getting ready to fall. I had been directing a few years at that point but had never seen that kind of abstract visual in my head before.

My pull to see him again got me to Australia by the end of the year. My first major manifestation. There was an incident on that trip that defined my life for the next few years. (That’s a story for another time.) That spun out into a lot of lessons around what it is to love. I discovered that monogamy wasn’t something I was interested in. I discovered that I can choose to open my heart. I learned to love without expectation. I learned about soul contracts and I firmly believe Tim and I had one. I’m forever grateful to him for being my teacher.

And it all started with a song.

1. This link goes to my Song of the Day post about it, which goes live the same time as this post. That post talks about it mostly from a musician’s perspective, while I’m talking about it here in an personal one. There’s links there to both the recording and a solo live version.