Sometimes things become more than what they were created to be. Maybe more often than not. That’s a tough one to guage… in a general sense… about created things.
Lets go with songs. I’m not certain Bob Dylan wrote, Blowin in the Wind to be performed as a hymn for a generation in flux. I think he was just a kid who thought of himself as a man that was tired of being looked at as a kid. All he really wanted was a pepsi.*
This song takes place in a real bar and describes real events. But like all bars the events that go on within this one have a serial quality like an ongoing television drama, a soap opera. The characters are the same. The roles they play have the same events but they are played by successive generations of bar people- regulars.
You can go through any life in the bar, or from nealry any theater of events and select some hapennings that caught your attention or seemed worthy of it and nearly everyone will have had some connection to said event. A bar that the same 30 people go to every night has -24 degrees of separation. It’s an incestuous pit of repeating events.
The song describes getting kicked out of a place you used to go, that you have returned to to see if someone you used to know is there.
The bar itself is now gone. Kicked out as it were. It had been a car dealership and service place, then a restaurant bar with music in the back- a venue I saw folk club legends in before I even knew there was such a thing. I saw Eddy Adcock and Paul Geremia and Jaimey Maysfield in there. I saw Greg Brown in there dozens of times. I eventually saw some killer indy rock shows there. Things turn.
In truth I was never kicked out of the Mill, but I certainly could have been.
I got to be a rock star in there, and a total degenerate. And the hotel is not that far.
And this song is now, to me a touchstone to a place that tons of people loved like a forever love. Once it was a story about some things that happened in a place that you could go. But now that that place is gone it's like a magic trick like a beacon so you can see a place that's not there but is still real… and not just to me.
I can’t play this box of wood the way I usedta could in the history of this bar, plus it’s no longer where you are. In a minor way, I’m glad I stopped in there today. Bartender set me up again. Treat me like a friend. Here’s eight dollars. keep the change. Boy if our lives were rearranged, would you still be fine if you exchanged your world for mine. Yes I burned one in the john, but the fan was on so it seemed alright to me. Now you say it’s time for me to leave. Well, here’s a dollar more. I’ll just make my way toward the door. No one even bats an eye while some wasted guy pours himself into a car. I hope the hotel ain't too far. Ain't the moon a sight. I’m glad I stopped in there tonight. I can’t play this box of wood the way I used to could in the history of this bar plus it’s no longer where you are in a minor way.
The funny thing is this- I have played this song regularly since before I quit playing and I always play it out since I started playing out again, but there are (were) no recordings of it and it’s not on a collection of any sort so here-
The definitive one, I guess and a nice video:
https://youtu.be/Jh7cvQJvOmQ?si=xnBRS73_ZQ8iKgT7
Crackle crackle
It's free!
*https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=AdUBTE9JpgI&pp=ygUxc3VpY2lkYWwgdGVuZGVuY2llcyBpbnN0aXR1dGlvbmFsaXplZCBtdXNpYyB2aWRlbw%3D%3D
