Have You Ever Seen The Rain? - Grace Carras

 My dad was born in 1969. 1969 was Jim Steinman’s senior year at Amhurst College. In order to fulfill the requirements for an independent study course that year, he wrote the lyrics and music for a musical called The Dream Engine, as well as an accompanying book. From what little I understand, The Dream Engine is about a guy who hates his girlfriend’s parents and fights “society”. According to Wikipedia, it literally ends with an “ensemble-wide display of nudity”. It sounds SO weird and, to my Gen Z sensibilities, a little bad. It’s exactly the shit I love, made by the exact type of person I love. Weirdos who make weird shit; people who aren’t afraid to tell about it. That was a common refrain from my writing professors when I was a senior at Michigan State. “Tell about it.”

I always knew that the phrase “turn around bright eyes” was from something, but never what. I’ve maintained a lukewarm, polite appreciation for Bonnie Tyler for 29 years, but had never heard (or, somehow, even heard OF) “Total Eclipse of the Heart”. Turns out, the lyrics “turn around bright eyes” actually first appeared in Jim Steinman’s The Dream Engine in 1969, the year my dad was born. That image is used to reference or describe the blast flash of a nuclear explosion. The poet in me has to appreciate the metaphor, though I haven’t written poetry in a long time.

I actually still haven’t listened to “Total Eclipse of the Heart” all the way through. My dad has; when I mentioned to him that I was writing this, he said the song "isn't that good". 

In 1975, Bonnie Tyler signed on with RCA Records, where she was marketed as a pop star. She would later choose not to renew this contract, because they were pushing her towards country music. During this time, Jim Steinman was making music for movies. In 1975, my dad was 6 years old. My great grandfather was an architect who loved technology; in the pictures he took of my dad when he was 6, we look like the same kid. 

My great grandfather was kind of a weird guy too. He loved trains so much that in the home he designed for his family, he had a train track that would run along the ceiling through a few rooms he spent most of his time in. He invented an experimental type of art theater called Somnophonics: “Music becomes a picture painted in sound; a picture becomes music played in color”. We’ve preserved a lot of the video footage that he filmed in his life; among recorded birthdays and ceremonies and parties, there are hours of sunlight dancing on the surface of lakewater. I think my great grandfather was hypnotized by the reflections in water. It’s a precious weakness, for which I probably have him to thank.

But anyway, Bonnie Tyler leaves RCA Records and signs with CBS/Columbus in, I think but don’t quote
me on it, 1982. She was asked to choose her own producer and Jim Steinman was her first choice. Apparently he initially said no because he wasn’t interested in working with a pop star (god, help me imagine Bonnie Tyler as a pop star), but agreed after she sent him a rock demo. In 1982, my dad was 13. I think that by this point, he had probably met my mom at least in passing. My mom’s grandfather worked with my dad’s grandfather, and their families lived close by. I love that about my parents; their lives and families were intertwined, just like everything important seems to be.

Bonnie Tyler performs “Total Eclipse of the Heart” for the first time in the living room of Jim Steinman’s apartment. Jim Steinman would later refer to the song as a “showpiece” for Bonnie Tyler’s voice; a lightning clap heard in households across the world. Apparently he was also working with Meatloaf at the time, and Meatloaf got super mad at Jim for giving the song to Bonnie instead of him. My great grandfather got in a huge argument of the same sort with Frank Lloyd Wright in 1952 when they both submitted their interest for the same job: a contract to design an art museum in Arizona. After my great grandfather was brought on instead of Wright, Wright sent him a letter calling him a “cheap competitor”. My great grandfather replied saying, “Perhaps the tulip looks upon the lily as a cheap competitor, but as a gardener, this idea never occurs to me.” 

Wright had been a close friend and mentor. I had a close friend and mentor in 2017, with whom I founded a poetry open mic series during my senior year at Michigan State. One of the first lessons he impressed upon me was, “be approachable, but unattainable”. To keep a healthy distance between myself and others, because anyone who gets to know me will be let down by the reality of who I am and stop coming to our shows (yes, he really said that). I was too awkward, shy, off-putting. Not smart enough, not kind enough, not old enough. The best I could be was pretty and surface-level friendly. Our success, he said, hinged on me showing everyone around me reflections of whatever they wanted to see, never revealing what’s underneath; on leaving the friendships and opportunities for real connection to him. I found this remarkably easy to do in poetry: to spill out my heart onstage, not so I could be understood, but so audiences could see reflections of their own lives in my words. To know they weren’t the first or only ones to feel alone or scared, because someone else wrote about it and shared it. Writing has always been the tool I relied on to try to close the gap between myself and other people, and it was also the shield I hid behind. It kept me approachable, but unattainable. I’d share a poem about heartbreak, but wouldn’t meet other poets for coffee or respond to their texts. Desperate for connection, but convinced that I had nothing to offer and didn’t deserve it.

Bonnie Tyler decided to really take a crack at being a singer when she competed in a competition in Wales in 1969, the year my dad was born. She came in second place to an accordionist. My dad told me, many years later, “whatever you want to do, just don’t half-ass it.” Bonnie Tyler certainly didn’t. She went on to become one of the most accomplished musicians of her time. I think a lot about the people I love when I write. My dad’s dad was a lawyer and a pilot and the son of greek immigrants; his grandfather a wildly successful weirdo who very intentionally dodged fame. My mom worked herself to the bone in a financial office for a sexist boss who made her life miserable while juggling classes and exams. My parents dated long distance until they were engaged. My dad commuted two hours both ways to Detroit for night school and worked a full-time job while my mom fed and cared for three babies at home alone. Sometimes, it feels like no one in my entire lineage has ever half-assed anything except for me.

In April of 2021, around the time that Jim Steinman died, I started my own actual play online. It was my first time ever running a TTRPG for my friends, and it‘s all been documented on the internet to haunt me forever. It wasn’t very good. By the end, I don’t think anyone was having any fun. I’ve heard that’s par for the course for most people’s first-ever campaigns, though that game started as, and will always be in my heart, a love letter to my friends: the people who gave me the time and patience I needed to come out of my shell after being deeply harmed. Some of those friends have moved on by now and aren’t in my life anymore, but we immortalized something important to me; a story about people whose lives intertwine. That was the thing that drew me to TTRPGs in the first place, and to poetry before that: the way we can draw lines that extend from me to you. The connection it allows someone like me, who still feels like they need permission. It’s a game, sure, but it’s also storytelling, as vulnerable as you care for it to be. It has made me softer; “attainable”. 

When I told my dad I wanted to take a crack at working in the TTRPG industry, he told me, “just don’t half-ass it.” 2025 is loosening its grip on us all, and I’ve spent nearly two years at Troll Lord Games, with people who love music and aliens and fantasy and stories of all kinds. What a privilege it is to hear about it all, to learn more about what people appreciate and in turn know them better. How lucky I am to look back on the last almost-two years and see memories of myself surrounded by weirdos who, for the first time, I don’t see myself as separate from or a burden to. I worked hard to have the opportunity to work hard here. I had to fight and defeat myself. Everything I write at Troll Lord Games is scraped from the marrow of the girl I had to kill in order to be here, who would rather see me dead than ever hear me speak.

So anyway, I wanted to share a review of Bonnie Tyler and Jim Steinman’s “Have You Ever Seen The Rain”, the starting track of their album Faster Than The Speed of Night. It’s a cover; the original is by Creedence Clearwater Revival. I’ve always loved covers; by now, I hope it’s apparent how much I appreciate art that calls back, that connects artists to each other. Jim Steinman waves a shimmering layer of mystique over every song he touches. Bonnie Tyler’s voice just cuts to the bone; at times, it takes on a delicate, icy quality that calls to my mind a glassy replica of the pop star she started as. The song goes, “When it’s over, so they say,/ it’ll rain a sunny day/ I know/ shining down like water”. I can’t help but think of my great-grandfather’s reflection videos. To me, it’s a song that questions whether everything will, eventually, be alright, and in the asking, the answer becomes clear. The storm is anchored to the calm that precedes it. The past will one day reach a tendril-like finger forward to break the surface between itself and the present. All of the hard work of yesterday will finally lend its hand.