My Afterglow Moment: Life, My Brother, and “Stop This Train”
My relationship with my brother hasn’t been the best, and my anxiety hasn’t helped. With John Mayer’s “Stop This Train,” I’m finally learning to embrace the speed of life, and I hope my brother is too.
Written by Valeria Mota
Illustrated by Asha Rountree
I’ll be the first to say that John Mayer is not the best person. He’s had multiple controversies for his sexist behavior throughout his career, even though he has apologized and seemingly improved from them. To me, he still seems like a major tool, but I can’t deny that he is a brilliant musician, and I have to admit that he has changed my life. It’s only thanks to him that I finally understood my older brother, something I’d never thought I would.
I never had the best relationship with my older brother. He was everything I was not: he was captain of the soccer team, incredibly good in his STEM classes, wildly popular at school, and seemingly well-liked by anyone who laid eyes on him. He was stubbornly confident (albeit slightly cocky), which I could only admire from afar. I, on the other hand, couldn’t score a goal to save my life, loved to read and write, and had anxiety attacks since I was six, which prevented me from forming real friendships until I became much older. I lived under his shadow for the longest time, and it seemed inevitable for me and those around me, including my parents, to compare us (even though my parents would never admit to doing so).
Yet, it seemed that my very existence irritated him. Aside from typical sibling arguments, he would barely talk to me, not even when I nervously tried to strike up a conversation without being rude. I saw my friends get along with their siblings, and I complained about my own relationship with him while secretly wishing he liked me. Everyone, including my parents, assured me that our relationship would improve with time, but as he got closer to attending college in 2020, I still couldn’t get through to him without my mother intervening. I hated admitting it, but I did admire him, and it hurt me how much he seemed to despise me — or, even worse, not care about me at all.
Of course, we all know that 2020 forced all of us to get a little closer to whomever we were living with. In my case, this closeness caused my mental health to take a drastic turn for the worse. My brother and I lived across the hall from each other, yet he would still refuse to talk to me, which only made me feel more isolated at home. However, he made sure to leave his bedroom door wide open while he played his guitar — specifically, while he played John Mayer’s 2007 live version of “Neon.”
My brother discovered John Mayer during the pandemic, and he clearly couldn’t get enough of him. He blasted Continuum and Where the Light Is: John Mayer Live In Los Angeles from every corner of the house, which annoyed me greatly. Despite my complicated feelings towards my brother, anyone could agree on how infuriating it is when someone plays music loudly without caring how it affects those around them. My entire family would yell at him to at least wear headphones, but my brother would only turn the volume down before turning it up again.
Because of my brother’s incessant stubbornness, I quickly grew to hate John Mayer. I could not even talk about him without getting irritated, and I loved the validation from my Swiftie friends who couldn’t stand him either, albeit for very different reasons. Yet, as much as I love music, I had not given Mayer’s work a fair chance at all. I only knew of him from my brother’s constant guitar playing, which is not the most direct way to listen to any artist.
Fast-forward to 2023, and I’m moving from my hometown of Monterrey, Mexico, to Austin, Texas, to start my college career at UT. There were a lot of mixed emotions for me during this time, but most of all, anxiety prevailed. It felt like I was thrown into a world full of expectations I could not manage: Suddenly, I had to get a competitive internship, an amazing social life, and an outstanding GPA. It was overwhelming — and frankly, still is — so I naturally turned to music for comfort.
Though I had my usual rotation of Tame Impala and Frank Ocean to get through my freshman fall semester, I decided to give John Mayer’s Continuum a try on a whim. I was thinking a lot about my brother during that time, comparing myself to him once again. He had been considerably nicer to me at that point — it was probably because he had a girlfriend at the time — but I still saw him as this unreachable entity, someone whose standards I had to live up to but never could. This reality changed with my first listen of Continuum, specifically one of the album’s standout tracks, “Stop This Train.”
“Stop This Train” begins with a simple yet soothing acoustic guitar riff that loops throughout the entire track, reinforcing the message that life will just go on and on. The song’s opening line caught my attention by presenting a striking contradiction: “No, I’m not color-blind / I know the world is black and white.” Mayer implies that it’s so common to see the world on your own terms until you deny any type of change, an idea that perfectly ties into the song’s chorus: “Stop this train / I want to get off and go home again / I can’t take the speed it’s moving in… / But honestly, won’t someone stop this train?” It’s clear that the song’s titular locomotive is a metaphor for life — a train of life that doesn’t slow down, no matter how much we beg it to. Despite seeming calm, Mayer’s vocals carry an undertone of panic as he notices that life moves too quickly for him to manage. He continues the song by voicing fears about “getting older” and “living life out on [his] own” without his parents’ support. In the bridge, the piano escalates as Mayer sees life improve for a while, only for him to “cry when [he’s] driving away in the dark,” showing that the underlying apprehension remains, even if he knows that the train of life will just keep going.
But perhaps the most touching part of the track is when Mayer discusses these fears with his father, who responds with advice I still strive to follow: “Don’t stop this train / Don't, for a minute, change the place you're in / And don't think I couldn't ever understand / I tried my hand / John, honestly, we'll never stop this train.” While terrifying, the simple acknowledgment that you can never stop this train comes with the acceptance that you’ve come this far for a reason. It’s hard to let go, but ever since discovering the song in my freshman year, I try to never change the place I’m in, to ride the train without frantically trying to stop it.
As I finished my first year of college, my anxieties didn’t completely dissolve, but I could at least weather them with the help of “Stop This Train.” What did come with the end of freshman year was the realization that my brother also loved this song for a reason: He felt the same way. Life’s constant speed also petrified him, and he was trying to find his way through it as well. This was the same brother whom I had always seen as borderline perfect, so this newfound understanding came as a shock to me. But it also came as a great comfort — we might have not had the best relationship, but on some level, we understood each other’s feelings. We weren’t sitting next to each other, but we were still passengers on the same train.
Now, ending my third semester at UT, I feel somewhat more at ease. I won’t lie — I’m still terrified about the uncertain future, but I’ve gotten used to the speed of this train. What helps is knowing that other people, especially those I would have never suspected, feel the same way. My brother and I even get along much better than before, and I do think it’s because “Stop This Train” deepened my understanding of him.
I don’t think I would ever want him to read this article; I’m not entirely sure how he would feel about it. Yet, I am glad that I still wrote it. There are still times when the speed of the train overwhelms me, but I’m trying to enjoy it as much as I can, and I hope my brother is out there enjoying it, too.