The Hope of a Song: In Gratitude to the Eagles
Robin B. Zeiger, Ph.D.
Sometimes music is mysterious. Sometimes it is sad. Timeless music however is often blessed with the power to inspire, offer hope, and transport us beyond ourselves to other places and states of mind.
Every time I hear the Eagles’ Hotel California (released in 1976, the year I graduated high school), I am transported back in time to an immeasurable lesson I learned about hope of the human soul. Without hope there is no longing, no growth, and no purpose to life.
Forty years ago, I spent a year of my life learning about humanity from the locked wards of Camarillo State Hospital, then one of the most famous psychiatric hospitals in the United States. I was not a psychiatric patient. Rather at the age of 25, I was a wet-behind-the-ears psychology intern.
I worked for a full year on the psychotic adolescent unit. The unwritten annals of psychiatric hospitals often boast of strange and mysterious stories, perhaps as a defense against the frightening aspects of the unconscious. Some are stories of hauntings and ghostly sightings. Some are of the mysterious influence of the full moon on lunacy.
One of the mysterious stories of “my unit” was the hope born in an urban myth about Hotel California. `Like some of the ghostly, yet friendly apparitions of Harry Potter, it floated amongst the teens. The myth asserted that the famous Eagle’s song, was created with Camarillo in mind and that the lyrics had been inspired by the hospitalization of a singer or a friend of the band. There are references and discussions of the myth on the internet. However, this interpretation appears to be totally fictitious.
It did not matter that the myth was not true. The song was a necessary blessing for these teens. They needed to keep this urban myth alive to offer them hope for a better future. They too could imagine becoming famous and singing a hit song someday.
In my research, I learned many facts about the song. It is said that Hotel California is the Eagle’s most iconic song. It topped the charts, selling over 16 million copies in the U.S. In 1978 the song won a Grammy award for Record of the Year. In interviews, members of the Eagles’ band asserted that the song is a commentary on the hedonism of America. In the words of founding member Don Henley (age 75), it is a song about the dark underbelly and the excess of the American dream. Rolling Stone magazine in 2005 placed this song as number 49 of the 500 greatest songs of all time.
I cannot quote the lyrics due to copyright laws. Yet I am positive many of you can hum the refrains. Some of you may know it by heart. You can find the words here.
To me, timeless and inspirational music and other artistic creations are often mysterious. We are left wondering. Thus, we are gifted a place for our own associations and creativity. We can then project our story onto the artistic piece that is unlike the story of anyone else.
My year at Camarillo taught me about another mystery, that of the blessings and the curses of the unconscious. With my wise and compassionate supervisor, Hank Marshall I grappled with questions of sanity and insanity. As the holder of the keys to the locked units, I learned to ask hard questions about the why and hows of mental illness and mental health. This dialogue continues within my until today as a teacher, supervisor, Jungian analyst, and writer. Hank helped me to build real, loving, and respectful relationships with the teens. For all of this, I am forever grateful.
The personal and collective unconscious must be treated with proper respect. For all of us, it harbors personal secrets and trauma. Our collective unconscious connects us to the roots and wings within our world.
We are all more alike than different. Yet, if our ego is not strong enough and we fall too deeply into the shadows of the unconscious, we too may suffer from psychotic process. In contrast, with the right dose and at the correct moment, the unconscious has the potential to inspire and birth creativity, that often includes inspiration, music, art, and even scientific discovery.
What did I perhaps learn most of all in that year living at a State psychiatric hospital? It was the power of hope. The grounds of Camarillo were blessed with a hill. Hank would sometimes walk with a teen up the hill and gaze upward and outward, into the distance.
The message of this simple journey was one of longing and dreaming of a healing and of a better future.
I do not work in a psychiatric hospital anymore. Yet, the lessons of my own Hospital California have served as a beacon in my personal and professional life. All these years later, I am left with gratitude for Hank and for the teens who taught me so much about humility and the complexity of life.
I am also thankful to musicians and artists as talented as the Eagles for gifting us hope, inspiration, and wings.
It was their song that the teens needed. They needed to project their own story onto the dark desert highway and the strange mission bell. I hope some of these teens now turned middle age are still humming the song. For me, Hotel California will not only be a story of hedonism, it will always remain my own personal story of hope in seemingly hopeless moments.
Please follow me and discover articles on mindfulness, finding peace in difficult times, Jung, longing and the Little Prince, Black Lives Matter, Amanda Gorman’s poetry and childhood nostalgia such as lighthouses and ice-cream trucks.One of my favorites is Dark Feet & Dark Wings: Wendell Berry’s Wisdom for Difficult Times.
Robin B. Zeiger is a practicing Jungian psychoanalyst, a certified Sandplay therapist, and a free-lance writer.
She is a member of the:
International Association of Analytical Psychology the Israel Institute of Jungian Psychology and president of the Israel Therapists Sandplay Association. She can be reached at rbzeiger@yahoo.com.
