My girlfriend has a horse.
It's amazing for people to get what they always wanted. It is complex to succeed. Most of the examples that come readily to mind of people getting what they always wanted fall into a regretable midlife crisis variety or a make a wish foundation variety. Rarely do we get regaled with tales of the ordinary I-saved-up-for-a-bike or I-have-paid-my-debt-completely variety.
I talk like I know you. I’m talking about myself I guess.
I take the stuff I see sometimes and I dress it up with melody and lies to make it seem, you know, cool. It all comes from someplace. I have said the songs I write come from real events and that is true in a vague enough sense.
I’ll walk you through this one.
Talked to old Bo at the counter getting lunch the other day.
There’s a buffet style Indian lunch place and there’s an older famous guy who eats there sometimes when I am eating there. We are neighbors so he’ll generally come over and say, Hey. He’s a good dude. I had played this place in Wisconsin and they had remembered him playing there to me [Cafe Carpe in Fort Atkinson Wisconsin]. They’d said it was the perfect thing for them- right room, right vibe, nice easy going crowd who drink beer and eat. He said something to the effect of, I don't wanna do road gigs anymore in a it’s-the-end-of-that-part-of-my-career kind of a way. When I reimagined the conversation in my head it’s a diner with a lunch counter and he’s just saying he's done.
F**k, this could get long.
He said he could see the end of a long road comin’, but it won’t show up today.
I get obsessive about a riff I like. I’ll wander around the house in ug knock off slippers and strum like a f*****g looney. The chorus came in as a set of things that people say to help each other go when it’s hard to.
Take it easy. Keep your head up. Walk the line, even if your fed up. It took a walk and a smile to get you what you’re standing on today. Brother it’ll let up.
The lady that boards my girlfriends horse came up in conversation a fair amount for a while. She's a wise old woman on a ranch in the mountains with horses out where there are bears and mountain lions. She has big Belgian dogs to make it safe. She is easy to idolize as a whole simple thing. She said once, “The fastest way is to take all the time it takes,” in reference to teaching an animal with a will of it’s own to do a thing with you, a person with a will of your own. Things wont be rushed. Pushing doesn't make it go faster. All of that, which my mind remembered as, “It’s gonna take the whole time.” To which I added, “if you don't mind,” and then the opposite is also true.
Then it turns into a stereotypable old man in a cafe thing many midwesterners have seen a thousand times from the next table over. The cafe is the Public House of the god fearing and the soberholics.
You can’t tell me nothin’ I don’t know. I wouldn’t pay them taxes if it wasn’t the law. Drive em up t’move me out. You don’t wanna see me go no lower.
Long silence at the lunch counter. Refocus. Zoom out.
They’re gonna pave the road to Downey, put up million dollar homes. It's the best view in the county. I wish they’d leave our ass alone.
Well, I got roughed up on my way in so I ain't got all I had. But I made it so you owe me and it won’t be all tht bad.
I ride my bike on gravel roads sometimes. They tend not to pave the ones that aren't going somewhere with a grocery store or a gas station. Downey has neither. If it had great views it might get paved. There's nothing wrong with Downey or the road there, but it’s not sought for development. I was seeing a fair amount of protest. The world of two or three years ago seemed so moderately dangerous. Getting roughed up seems tame.
Chorus
Uplifting refrain
Chorus
Maybe it’s about making friends with something you can’t talk to. I truly do not know. Sometimes it’s beautiful to accept the process unfolding, things slowly becoming better. Setbacks to progress are pretty disheartening.
It’s hard to read when everything sounds like dog-whistle as the result of disastrous politicking, and all the time it takes is too long to wait. Post truth morality is a roller coaster that throws customers off it at deadly heights. Hold on to the the human being next to you. The roller coaster is an indifferent tosser.
Uh..
Buy my record.
