Once all you had to do when trouble showed its head was to pack up and leave.
And Guy Clark sang:
Pack up all your dishes
Make note of all good wishes
Say goodbye to the landlord for me
Sons of bitches always bore me.
She was there. So the morning was alive.
And Kristofferson sang:
I have seen the morning burning golden
On the mountain in the sky
Aching with the freedom of the feeling of an eagle when she flies.
Loving her was easier than anything I’d ever do again.
It was all about right now.
So Buffy Ste. Marie sang:
Don’t ask how of me.
Don’t ask why of me.
Don’t ask forever of me.
Love me.
Now.
You thought that you knew dusty, rough roads back then.
Because there was always a place to rest.
While Eric Anderson sang.
Take off your thirsty boots
And stay for awhile
Your feet are hot and weary
From a country mile.
Ready for anything you were.
Because that glowering man in black was always ready. Singing:
I keep a close watch on this heart of mine
I keep my eyes wide open all the time
I keep the ends out for the ties that bind
Because you’re mine
I walk the line
But something cracked open
Somewhere along the way.
Just beyond your reach.
So you grabbed tight to the lyric of goodbye.
And Jimmy Webb told the story:
Ran away with you when I was 17
To be with you
On the California coast
Drinkin’ margaritas all night in the old cantina
On the California coast
Our dreams of endless summer
Were just too grandiose
Adios
Adios
I’ll miss the blood red sunset
But I’ll miss you the most
Adios.
That brought clarity.
And that ultimate gift.
A next time.
While John Stewart sang.
You once thought of me
As a white night on a steed.
Now you know how funky
I can be.
Then came the stumbling.
Then flat out free falling.
No clue where you’re tumbling
Or where you’ll end up.
And in this new world of downhill climbing, stripped away sunshine, not really knowing what’s next, or if it ever maybe sometime would get any better at all, John Stewart singled out some bright moments when he sang,
And our goodtime starts and ends
Without dollar one to spend
Cause how much baby
Do we really need?
Constant struggle for survival gets old fast.
Romance and poverty make a very tough couple.
You have few and far between bright moments.
Those bright moments revealed lyrics like caveman drawings on the walls
Continually rediscovered through the smokey mists if time
Like Dylan furiously writing in the cold 3rd floor walk up of a dump in the Village:
Yes to dance beneath the diamond sky
With one had waving free
Silhouetted by the sea
Circled by the circus sands
With all memory and fate
Driven deep beneath the waves
Let me forget about today
Until tomorrow.
And then like a timeless wind blowing snow from the Canadian cold plains of Abraham. Joni Mitchell speaks
I’ve looked at love from both sides now
From win and loose and still somehow
It’s loves illusions I recall
I really don’t know love
At all.
While scrunched down on the ancient brick sidewalks, under the promise of a Parisian spring rain, Jacque Brel growls:
If we only have love
Then tomorrow will come
And the days of our lives
Will rise on that morn.
And on a bus ride through the darkness, under Indiana stars, John Mellencamp listens to an old man who is riding beside him. And the man says,
Days turn to minutes
And minutes to memories
Life takes away the dreams
That we have planned
You are young.
You are the future
So suck it up
Tough it out
And do the best you can.
So you walk towards the water. You get down to the sea somehow, as Jackson Brown said, and you find this ancient storyteller, guy named Luke, taking down one very simple story. A story that will be told till the end of time. What Luke saw was a fisherman, Name of Simon. And what Simon said was this:
“God, we’ve worked all night long, but we’ve caught nothing. Yet if you say so, I will let down the nets. If you say so—I will let down the nets.”
And as Simon and his fisherman cast off from the shore, ready to fish, Sam Cooke sang.
It’s been a long time coming
But I know.
A change is gonna come.