Music touches my soul. I am not a musician – can barely play the radio. But a sweet melody can make me cry even if it is not associated with any significant moment in my life; simply the beauty of the sounds touches me. (Consider “Jupiter, bringer of jollity,” or “Lieutenant Kijé Suite, Op. 60.”)
But some well-crafted lyrics can drive me quickly to any emotion I ever experience. Sadness, love, pensiveness, joy, pity — song lyrics can evoke them all.
Indeed, my whole life can be well captured by my favorite lyrics. Let me tell you what I mean, and invite you to consider which lyrics define your life.
“Put me in coach, I’m ready to play today.”
Song: “Centerfield.” John Fogerty
My youth was most clearly defined by pick-up sports. Football in the fall and winter. Basketball whenever they play basketball. But mostly, and most memorably, baseball in the summer. But really beginning with Spring Training in our home town, when my mom would take me to see the Yankees, on a school day! But that was a long time ago, and now I’m “A-roundin’ third, and headed for home.”
“Old man take a look at my life, I’m a lot like you.”
Song: “Old man.” Neil Young
The memory is oddly salient of my listening to a busker sing this on “The Drag,” the street next to the University of Texas at Austin, when I was in graduate school and, literally, I was “Twenty-four and there’s so much more.” Now I’m the other guy.
“If good looks were a minute, you know you could be an hour.”
Song: “The way you do the things you do.” Smokey Robinson and Bobby Rogers (sung by The Temptations)
This is perhaps my favorite song lyric of all time. I think I could die happy if I had written this line. And it is a line I have repeated to my wife, seriously, meaningfully, sincerely, hundreds of times. You should see her!
“Daddy loves momma and momma loves him and tomorrow we get to do it over again.”
Song: “Home.” Blue October
For me the best part of life was the time of parenting when the kids were at home. The everdayness of it. This song is so good I forgive the inexact rhyme. (Rare for me.) But I am so grateful that we got to do it over again, for 22 years (from the time the first was born ’til the time the second went off to college).
“Take me in your arms tonight, Hold me to your breast, tell me it will be alright, so I can take my rest.”
Song: “So I can take my rest.” Robert Earl Keen
My wife (you know, the woman whose good looks would make her “an hour”) has been my strength. Sometimes I have insomnia. Oftentimes I have anxiety. Somehow, when she says “It’ll be OK” it makes me feel better. Sometimes I will ask her to say “It’ll be OK,” and she will. And even though I have just asked her to say it, I feel better.
“’Can you teach me to throw,’ I said, ‘Not today, I got a lot to do,’ he said, ‘That’s okay.’”
Song: “Cats in the cradle.” Harry Chapin
Really, this whole song just tears me up. Turns out I don’t have a lot of regrets in this arena. You know how Christians talk about being “born again”? I pretty much divide my life up into the time before our first glorious son was born and the time since. I was a very involved dad, maybe too much so. I can only imagine listening to this song if I were a dad who had been gone most of the time. If you’re a dad and this song doesn’t move you, please “defriend” me now.
“They are pointing toward the exits, but it looks more like a prayer.”
Song: “Window seat.” Dawes
Isn’t that brilliant – picture the flight attendant using both hands pointing to the emergency exits but then, hands together, pointing to the lights on the floor that would direct you to the exits. It looks like an attitude of prayer. This song represents my time as a young working man. I never had to do much travel with work, but I hated most all of it that I had to do. The song goes on: “These planes are built for sifting through the warriors from the men.” Clearly, I was not a warrior. I was a relatively meek man, just eager to be on the plane to get back to my family. Teach ’em how to throw, doncha know?!
“And when you finally fly away, I’ll be hoping that I served you well.”
Song: “Forever young.” Rod Stewart
He doesn’t know it, but this is “our song,” with one of my sons. (Can there be an “our song” if only one person knows about it?) It is so sweet, and captures the whole meaning of necessarily selfless parenthood. And indeed, seems to me that both of our sons have “grow[n] to be proud, dignified and true.” And I think they knew that “. . . whatever road you choose, I’m right behind you win or lose.”
“I wish you children that grow to make you proud.”
Song: “I wish you well.” Bill Withers
So now one of our sons is a father. He has joined what is, to me, the best club in the world. And my fondest wish for him is that his daughter will grow to make him as proud of her as I am of him!
“They were glued together body and soul, that much more with their backs up against the wall.”
Song: “Never die young.” James Taylor
This is truly “our song,” for my wife and me. I don’t know how James wrote it without knowing us: “. . . true love written in stone, they were never alone, they were never that far apart.” We ARE “a little too sweet, a little too tight, . . . not enough tough in this tough town.” You can actually contract Type II diabetes just from hearing our story.
“How the hell does a person go to work in the mornin’, come home in the evenin’ and have nothin’ to say?”
Song: “Angel from Montgomery.” John Prine. (But the Bonnie Raitt version!)
This line has almost nothing to do with my life. My wife and I have always had much to talk about. But a) I think this is a magnificent line, and b) I include it here on the off chance that Bonnie Raitt reads this and wishes to thank me by giving me a little kiss on the cheek.
“Hey ya. Hey yaaaaa yaaaaa.”
Song: “Last train home.” Pat Metheny
This song doesn’t really have any lyrics, but it is a cool tune, and the song title fits my pensiveness at growing old.
“Doctors said daddy wouldn’t make it a year, but the holidays are over and he’s still here.”
Song: “Speed trap town.” Jason Isbell
I encourage you to go listen to the outrageously poetic and efficient word picture Isbell paints. In just three minutes and a half he tells an entire heartbreaking story that models for us the looking backward and the moving forward. Perhaps the bad dad is going to be me “still here.”
Sometimes life seems so fragile, and sometimes it seems as though a person cannot die.
“Life gets mighty precious when there’s less of it to waste.”
Song: “Nick of time.” Bonnie Raitt
And so, now I am at the final stage of life. Well, one of the final stages. (As George Carlin said, “You hear all these 55-year-olds claiming to be ‘middle-aged,’ but you really don’t know a lot of 110-year-olds, do you?”) Bonnie’s song is about, mostly, a found-late-in-life romantic love, and that part is not my story. But as I swoop into my “golden years” (my ass!), each month, each day gets mighty precious. It is like, you know when you get a new bottle of shampoo or tube of toothpaste, and you’re so free with it? Cover that whole length of toothbrush bristle with some pepperminty goodness. But as you get toward the end of the tube or the bottle you start using it more sparingly. I’m afraid there may be precious little life left to squeeze outta this tube.
In the same song is the line “I see my folks a gettin’ on, and I watch their bodies change. I know they see the same in me and it makes us both feel strange.” When I was in my 40s my mother once gave me some Grecian Formula 44, not as a joke. And as I watch our magnificent sons start turning grey, and they see my growing wattle and drooping eye lids, well it makes us all feel strange.
“We’re trying, we’re hoping, we’re loving, we’re hurting, we’re cryin’, we’re callin’, ’cause we’re not sure how this goes. Calling all angels . . . .”
Song: “Calling all angels.” Jane Siberry
Oh man, am I so not sure how it goes!
“Where o death is now thy sting?”
Song: “Christ the Lord is risen today.” Charles Wesley
Thanks for reading this. I look forward to the next time we connect. “You know we’ll have a good time then.”
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“If I go there will be trouble, if I stay it will be double.”
“Should I stay or should I go now”?