Further and further
“Watching the River Run“
from things that we’ve done
Leaving them, one by one
Kenny Loggins/Jim Messina (1973)
It was June of 2015 when I accepted an invitation to play guitar (and sing) at a pair of benefit concerts for an old friend, a former musical partner. It was the first time I’d performed publicly in 30 years. I haven’t stepped on-stage since that day and likely never will again.
But there was a time when music consumed me. My playing didn’t come within a mile of virtuosity, and I identified strongly with Leo Kottke’s characterization of his own singing voice. (To wit, “Geese farts on a muggy day.”) Still, my 12-string and I found our way into loosely knit acoustic duos and trios. Usually, though, I performed solo.
I did mostly covers. I also wrote a handful of songs, one of which — an ode to my love of the Montana mountains, expressing my longing to return — popped into my head yesterday.
I sang it to myself. Twice. The tune preserves one of the happiest times of my life, but I had to admit that it really wasn’t very good.
And that brought to mind something I heard in my favorite honky tonk several years ago. The artist occupying the small stage that night — Ray Scott, I think it was — invoked a well-known Nashville maxim:
“A happy songwriter is a crappy songwriter.”
I dunno, maybe that’s true. Maybe our best art is a product of pain, angst, loss, sadness and the like. Maybe darkness is the wellspring of brilliance.
And there’s ample evidence to support a direct happy-crappy connection. No, Bobby McFerrin isn’t the worst of it — that distinction belongs to a musical “movement” that first appeared in 1968, the celestial choir of The Positivity Cult:
Up! Up with people!
You meet ‘em wherever you go,
Up! Up with people!
They’re the best kind of folks we know.
If more people were for people,
All people ev’rywhere,
There’d be a lot less people to worry about,
And a lot more people who care.
I actually remember singing that in grade school. Kinda makes your teeth hurt, doesn’t it?
But not every happy song is trite. Not every catharsis set to music is profound. And since humanity comes standard with the full range of emotions, what makes the difference between trash and treasure?
It’s not what we feel. It’s what we live.
Writing a great song from pain, for example, requires holding onto that pain — dwelling on it, re-living it, resisting moving on. Some artists are predisposed to the practice, while others do it intentionally in order to mine the experience for the sake of creativity. Either way, anguish becomes muse.
When I wrote recently about Mark Knopfler, I said that “Romeo and Juliet,” reportedly inspired by his three-year relationship with a woman named Holly, is my all-time-favorite love song. Watch him perform it live in 2006:
His eyes glisten. His phrasing is unmistakably personal. Twenty-five years and two marriages after the breakup, he was still singing that song to her.
(He also put it on four albums. Talk about carrying a torch.)
The occasional catharsis is essential to good mental health, of course. Prolonged exposure, however, has consequences.
In my WordPress “drafts” folder is an unpublished post written almost five months ago. It’s very long, it’s very good and, as the opening sentence declares, it’s “brutally candid.”
I haven’t so much as opened that draft since March 30th. I determined that moving on serves me better than dwelling on it. Unless the other side in the divorce forces my hand, it’ll never see the light of day.
I’m a happy man. These are the best days of my life. As for any emotional connection to the last 20 years and the loss I suffered on February 3rd, I’m indifferent to it.
That might not make for a great blog — a happy blogger may indeed be a crappy blogger — but it definitely makes for a better life.
It was comfortable enough in the cabin yesterday afternoon, I decided, to make dinner on the stove. I sliced up some smoked sausage and fried it in my three-quart Revere Ware saucepan.
When that was done, I removed the sausage and dumped in a can of Ranch Style-brand beans (the version with jalapeño slices). I brought that to a simmer, let it perk awhile, then added back the sausage and let it simmer s’more.
Before serving, I seasoned it with two shakes of Flatiron Pepper Company Hatch Valley Green. Texas toast and Yuengling Lager made the meal.
Cheap, easy, delicious and filling, with leftovers. That’s how to do it.
Take care of yourselves, Patriots. Stay calm. Stay sharp. Stay free.
#WiseUp #LibertyOrDeath #Ungovernable