There's a song on the new T Bone Burnett album (it's actually an outake that made it onto the iTunes version), and that line wins my nomination for the best lyric of 2006.Staticing out feels like the perfect description of the reality I experience on a regular basis.
There's an article from AP this morning about the mental health problems being faced by folks trying to bring back their lives in New Orleans. It's a story about a Times-Picayune photographer who just flat out lost it the other night and wound up in a major altercation with cops, begging them to kill him.
The article provides an interesting juxtaposition to the conversation I had two nights ago in which someone, safely ensconced in his northern california sanctimonious cluelessness, expended a great deal of effort explaining to me why my experiences post-Katrina have been somehow less significant than those of others who lost more than I did.
Like there's a competition and someone's going to be declared the winner of the most to suffer award.
I really might just static out at any moment...
At times like this I really find great comfort in the strange, sometimes painful, regularly profound and always mind altering lyrics of T Bone (and a few others who definitely show up on my desert island disc list).
This album closes with a live version of an old T Bone song, "River of Love" that is so packed with brilliant lyrics that it's not even possible to isolate one as singularly special. It's just one of those songs that hits you on every chord change.
For example:
The first step was hard
but I've had trouble with them all
Or how about... Oh forget it.... Just listen to the damn song.
As for me... I've never been closer... and I've never been farther away.
4 comments:
I just saw WALK THE LINE. T Bone did the score. Nice.
Hoz ("Big Cash fan" - Mikey, Swingers)
I am always torn between amusement and annoyance when people try to tell me my suffering or sadness or whatever is somehow less important than that of others. I figure a rap on the side of the head with an empty rum bottle ought to put suffering into perspective...
Hey... now there ya go me pirate friend!
Of course, such an action would require the EMPTYING of said rum bottle first... an excellent plan in and of itself.
I think I said to you, "At least you were only there a month," or something like that. Please accept my deepest apology for my insensitivity. I certainly did not think at the time that you had suffered less than anyone else. J.
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