Erich Bergen – Running Through the Night

By starrymag | October 7, 2018

By: Taylor Gates

 

 

Q) I want to first talk about your new single “Running Through the Night,” which is so beautiful and so powerful. You’ve been very open about the fact that this song stemmed from a traumatic event in your life. Can you talk a little bit about that?

 

A) It’s funny because it certainly has to do with the past five years of my life, but I don’t want this song to be known as “the cancer song.” This isn’t a song about a cancer battle or cancer at all, but the past five years of my life post-cancer has been an incredible time of growth for me, especially as someone who never had anything really wrong with them. I never broke any bones. I never had any major tragedy in my life. It was all kind of hunky-dory, which is a sort of rare thing.

 

At the age of twenty-seven, I got handed this word: cancer. It came out of thin air. Just as fast as it came into my life it kind of went away. I had a type of cancer that was extremely treatable if you deal with it quickly and catch it early enough. It was a treatable cancer and we got it all, so I’m clear, but what they don’t tell you about is the residue that stays with you in the form of mental health–the anxiety and fear that you live with on a daily basis. I say often that when I stub my toe I fear I have cancer of the toe. You’re always living with this fear that the other shoe is going to drop and when that word is going to come back again. That side is way more debilitating than the disease ever was. Living with that the past few years forces one to grow up fast and in a way that I wasn’t expecting to. The song kind of came out of that, all the sudden realizing it was time to grow up. It’s a song about growing up and becoming an adult, taking the punches and rolling with them.

 

Q) Would you say writing this song was a therapeutic process for you? Did it come more from a place of celebrating life? What does it mean to you?

 

A) That’s an interesting question. I don’t think the act of writing the song was therapeutic. Having the song come to life and turning it into a fully fleshed-out song, hearing it on the radio and hearing people’s responses to it – that has been therapeutic. Writing the song didn’t feel like much of anything since it came out so easily and quickly. I wrote it in less than a day. I wrote it in a few hours. It just kind of flew out of me and I couldn’t believe the words were coming to my head as quickly as they were and the rhyme schemes were coming as quickly as they were. They had never come that fast, so I was just excited I got a song out of me that quickly when I wasn’t even planning to write that day.

 

Definitely the response, people writing me their personal stories on Twitter and Instagram about how the song has connected to them has been therapeutic. The universal language of music connects us all and having this song relate to people and mean so much to people that they’re contacting me has made me feel not alone.

 

Q) Do you remember where the image of running through the night actually came from? I think that’s such a powerful picture.

 

A) It just kind of was there. What I remember about writing that song was walking down the street in Manhattan with my dad and the first line – “I’m getting used to seeing my father’s face in the mirror” – came to me immediately. When melodies and melodic lines come to me I take out my phone and record them into the voice notes app. Sometimes when I do that it’s just humming a melody and sometimes there are some words with it. Oftentimes they’re just nonsense words or consonants and vowels to make sounds. Running through the night came with the melody. There wasn’t an image or inspiration that came lyrically, it just kind of came at the same time. That’s kind of where the belief about songwriting comes from – the song is already there and you’re just chipping away at it like a sculptor, sculpting into rock.

 

Q) The lyric video you have to accompany the song on your YouTube video is so beautiful. Did you help develop that as well? How did you go about creating it?

 

A) While this song is certainly a pop song and it certainly has an electronic vibe to the production, I remember saying to Seth Jones (who produced the track) that I always wanted it to feel like someone running. It’s not like a boot camp workout class, not a high-energy treadmill song, but just that idea of running along and pushing through life. I wanted to keep that running rhythm under the song the whole time and the two of us found that natural running sound.

 

What was most important to me about this song, though, was the lyrics. I knew when I put out this song I didn’t want it just to be background noise or a cute pop song. I wanted it to fool you into thinking it was a cute pop song in the background but then if you really listened to the lyrics having it be something deep. I thought the best way to do it first and foremost was to get a lyric video out there so people could read these lyrics along with listening to it.

 

Images of youth and growing up while running through one’s life was kind of the general inspiration for the video. There’s a real music video coming in the future, but what I wanted to do first was make sure the lyrics were understood.

 

Q) I can’t talk to you and not ask about “Madam Secretary.” Bisexual representation is so prominent on this show with both your character Blake and Sara Ramirez’s character Kat. The scene where Blake comes out to Elizabeth is so touching and important. How did you feel getting the script for that and then filming it?

 

A) It was crazy because they handed me this script that had a page and a half monologue in it. Regardless of what the monologue was about, the fact that I was going to do a page and a half long monologue on television…I couldn’t believe it. Maybe it’s been done. I don’t know. But I’ve never seen that on television.

 

When I realized what it was about and what exactly we were doing, kind of like the cancer thing, I was waiting for the other shoe to drop – for them to say, “CBS has decided we have to do less of this.” But we changed one or two words between the first draft that I saw and the version that we filmed and that aired. What was written ended up being what we made and I couldn’t quite believe that we were going to do it. As an actor, I was excited to explore it and to do it on television. Certainly, trying to memorize it was a few days of work. [Laughs]

 

But what I wasn’t prepared for was the response. My social media just blew up and I couldn’t believe the responses I was getting – how it was impacting people. I put it up again on social media the other day because it was Bisexual Visibility Day and, again, all these responses came flooding in. The same response happened when I put it up on social media again as when it aired. I got all these people writing me privately because of how it helped them come out to their families and friends. I got hundreds of people writing me saying how it helped them realize their sexuality themselves as gay or transgender, not even necessarily bisexual, but just that they were facing this.

 

I think there are a lot of people whose sexuality is not the thing they lead with in their life. They think there are more important things in the world or other aspects to their life, but that moment for Blake helped them be truthful to their friends and families and have more well-rounded relationships with these people. I was just so amazed at the response and very, very grateful I get to be associated with it.

 

I even got some people who said, “This means a lot to me. I can’t come out to my family because of where I live in the world” or “it’s illegal here.” People from all over the world. It was very impactful for me personally as an actor. Of course, I was so proud.

 

We’ve made incredible progress in showing different sexualities on TV, but bisexuality is such an interesting topic. As a society, I think oftentimes people are more okay with it for women than they are for men. I think with men there’s still this belief that bisexuality doesn’t exist and that they’ll come out as gay later and I think it has to be looked at more on television. With men, we want to define everyone as gay or straight, feminine or masculine. An in-between world is viewed as so threatening to men, women and otherwise. I wish it weren’t because so many people don’t fit the black and white of that all. I was thrilled to be one of the early representations of that on television.

 

Q) Very well said. Adding onto that scene, so many of my favorite moments are between Blake and Elizabeth. You two have such a wonderful dynamic. What’s it like working with Tea Leoni?

 

A) I’ve gotten unbelievably lucky working on this show because it’s the best group of actors I’ve ever worked with. It’s the most fun set to be on. It is so casual. We laugh so much. I mean it wholeheartedly when I say there is not a single person I wouldn’t want to spend the day with. You hear horror stories about television shows of people working for one year let alone five years with people they don’t get along with or this person not talking to that person. We get guest actors that come onto our show that say, “You guys don’t know how good you have it. This set is the greatest set.”

 

That energy and behavior on any set will always start with number one on the call sheet and your star. For this show, that’s Tea Leoni. She sets the tone that makes it the most fun work environment. She’s just the best. As an actor, she wants to play and try to things on the spot and adapt. She loves the moments that don’t feel like stereotypical television and things that are a little messy. Lines on top of each other, things that TV editors hate she loves. That makes it the most fun environment.

 

Q) There’s obviously the question of, “What is Blake going to do once the year is up and he gets fired?” Will we get to see that explored this season?

 

A) We will! I just found out the other day and got the script where that year mark hits and what happens to Blake. It’s a beautiful, beautiful episode. It could have been handled in many different ways and I think the writers did a wonderful job. I didn’t even expect them to go in this direction.

 

What I can tell you is that Blake is not going anywhere on the show. In fact, you’ll probably be seeing more of me. I’m not leaving the show at all. I can’t tell you what he’s doing or anything about that mostly because all I know is up to the beginning of what happens to me. I don’t know anything beyond that yet.

 

Q) Can you tease anything else for Season 5?

 

A) I think we’re exploring topics that are very much in the news right now like patriotism versus nationalism. We’re certainly going to explore Elizabeth’s possible run for the presidency. I don’t know if we’ll get to the campaign this year. Based on the timeline of the Dalton presidency, I can’t see how we would get to that this year, but those topics do begin to get explored.

 

All of us having seen what happened with the last election and watching the news every night being about what did actually happen, it’s going to be interesting to see things from that side. As fictional as our show is, it’s definitely based on the truth. It’ll be very interesting to see how a presidential run is actually put together.

 

Q) Is there anything you would like to say to your fans?

 

A) I’ve been a professional actor since I was ten years old and I feel like somehow I just hit my stride and began to do the things I’ve always wanted to do. I’m so thankful to anyone who listens to what I have to say. I tend to get my feet wet in a couple of different ponds with writing and acting and songwriting and I know it can be a lot for fans to keep up with the different things I love to do. So, just thank you very, very much for ever listening.

 

All I want to do is try and make art in the best way I know how, whether that comes out as a song or a script or a TV show or a modeling campaign. [laughs] I’m very thankful to everyone for watching.