Now that Bob Childers has went and gone, who's going to take his place as the Godfather of Red Dirt Music? Nobody. This ain't the Cosa Nostra, people; it's Oklahoma, and in OK, there's only one Bob Childers. Still, if anyone were to the new Dylan of the Dust, it'd be Bob Childers's protegee and peer, Texan/Okie Jimmy LaFave.LaFave--who helped Childers record his first album--has been playing the Stillwater and Austin scenes for twenty years, bringing his expressive voice to his own brand of Red Dirt music, as well as to magnificent interpretations of Dylan and Guthrie (and he's a Guthrie scholar, too). His best interpretation--on record--that I've heard though is this rendition of the Gretchen Peters-penned/Trisha Yearwood 1995 record. Peters--as mentioned before--is a fantastic songwriter, and this is one of her best tunes. If anyone knows the song--it's been covered multiple times--it's from Yearwood's version.
Yearwood--one of the best country female vocalists of the early '90s--sings most of the Peters song as a wistful reverie, letting her powerful voice soar at the right moments while keeping her voice sweetly even-keeled during the rest of the song. It works well, and it's a solid record, as I've yet to find a Yearwood record that she didn't elevate to at least solid status just by the fact that it's her that's singing. Her singing on this song, though, doesn't mine the depths, the fragility, the soul-searing ache. LaFave's singing does.
The song itself tells of one who sees the face of his (or her, depending on the singer) departed lover in the crowd at every stop along a trek across America. It's more than just a song about heartbreak, though; it's about the loss of self, about how one's identity can be so subsumed by another--or, rather, the thought of another--in a relationship (that one eleveates to the notion of the perfect, ideal romance--the mental creation of some mythical, intangible, intertwined one: the soulmate, the "you complete me," the "made for each other;" like Clint Black once sang, "We tell ourselves/That what we've found/Is what we're meant to find") that when the other leaves, that one feels like part of one's self is now gone, that the now-separated lover has taken part of one's self because this lover was part of one's self...and it's all a false notion, all born of fantasy and Hallmark romanticism, all born of an elevated sense of the other (lover) and of self. No matter how ridiculous and farfetched the pre-breakup/separation expectations of permanency were, no matter how false the veneer, no matter the facade--'cause our self is just that; it can never be given or ascribed or intertwined--the hurt is palpable, and the empty feeling reverberates throughout the mind, and the dissipation of the ideal clouds perception and awareness with its vanishing vapor. It's worse than unrequited love. I know.
WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING! WARNING!
.........................HERE IT COMES; DON'T SAY YOU AIN'T BEEN WARNED..............................
I've loved silently and from afar and not had the love returned--more than once. Numerous times, actually. Only once, though, have I thought that that I'd found the one, my perfect counterpart, the one I was meant to find, the one I'd dreamed of since first grade. She loved me, too. She thought all my jokes were funny, she liked to talk to me, she liked to listen to me, she liked my music, she liked my writing, she thought I was cool, she thought I was smart, and she wanted to be my friend. Nothing wrong with that of course,* but come now...she and I were destined to be together, and I didn't even believe in destiny. I just needed time to work my magic, turn my illusions and sleights-of-the mind into something more magnificent. Within a few years, poof! The rabbit really appeared out of thin air! She was mine! She accepted me as hers, she as mine.
The next week, the phone rang: "I'm sorry, Andy. I tried, I really did, but it's just not....I just can't do it. It's not the same for me. You understand, right?"
No, I didn't. Talking to friends didn't help, nor did alcohol, nor did music, nor did prayer. Focusing on studies...no, couldn't concentrate. What did studies matter, anyway? They were to one day lead to success and happiness, right? How was I ever going to be successful and happy without her? She accepted me, when no one else** ever had, when all I'd ever had was rejection whenever I decided to come out of my shell? My mom always told me that I'd meet the right one in college, someone smart enough and nice enough to accept me...and college was almost over. There was never going to be another right one, how could there be? She...she...she was perfect for me. Now, she's told me she can't do it. She's told me that there was no us. No me.
Tried half a bottle of pills one night with a pint of Wild Turkey as a chaser, and you know what? Death wouldn't even accept me. Heh. That was funny. After spending that night trying to rid myself of the vestiges of self and only ridding myself of the means (via vomit) of doing just that, I spent the next hours till dawn laughing, longest I've ever laughed in my life. It was all a joke, and I finally got the punchline.
I dropped out of school. I went back home and worked full time at a drug store playing gopher and sodajerk. No shame, though, not after what in my mind was the ultimate humiliation. I soon grew bored of my job,*** and decided that since Death wouldn't take me, that since I was going to live, that even without a direction, without a goal, without a real life, I was going to have to find something to do that would keep my mind occupied. See, by this time, months down the road, I'd accepted my rejection, but the longing never completely went away; I'd not just been dumped by the "love of my life," but by my best friend, too, as she was both. My conversations with my other friends never lasted long anymore because I never had much to say. I had no pithy observations to make, because I didn't find anything humorous anymore. I'd already heard the world's funniest joke, and nothing else could measure up; so, I withdrew into isolation, and I started to see her...when she wasn't there. I'd hear her voice, too. I mean, I never heard her voice audibly, but I heard her in my head, knowwhatImean? Answering questions? Making her own observations and comments? Yeah? Good--because I thought I was the only who was going crazy at this point.
To stem the tide, I re-enrolled in school--different location this time--and I saw her face less and less. Her voice softened to a whisper. Soon both were gone--not for good, but for good enough. I then happened upon a girlfriend (or, rather, vice-versa), and she, distanced now, further in the horizon slipped. I soon met my pal Foot Foot, and over the course of the next year, I started falling in love for the second and last time in my life. Wary now, though, so I kept my options open, less I....
Close to the vest long enough, I eventually had to choose, had to sacrifice two close relationships. One of these was my then-girlfriend. I broke up with her; it was difficult. I cried, not because I loved her--as I didn't, not fully--but because I was afraid I'd hurt someone the way I'd been hurt. It wasn't the same, though, not for her. My then-girlfriend and I didn't always get along well, and we differed on many subjects, and she didn't get but about half my jokes, and she didn't understand my writing, and I know she felt the disconnect as well. It still bothered me, though.
The second relationship--ending that one bothered me more, mainly for selfish reasons. What if I had chosen wrong? What if Foot Foot never accepted me as her companion, as a friend and as a lover? I knew the woman in the second relationship did, and I knew I was safe there, and I knew we'd get along well, as we shared many things in common, and she understood me, and she made me feel that I was important as I, not just as a friend, or as a companion. I liked being with her. She was fun. She was deep. She was smart. She was ambitious. She was fearless. I admired her. When she left for good, I made her a mixed tape**** and told her to play it after she left my driveway. Other than the first song, I don't remember what I put on there. I do remember that first song, though. It was Bruce Springsteen's "Bobbie Jean." If you know the song, then I know what you're thinking: "What a nerd!" That'd be correct. I loved her, though.
What I felt for my pal Foot Foot, though, was something I never thought I'd feel again. I didn't want to feel it again. After finding myself initially infatuated, I guarded against it. Hell, I even tried to pass her off, set her up with a friend one time, just because I knew I was starting to like her far too much, and I needed to keep my distance. She kept on calling, though, kept wanting to go places with me, listen to me...just like she had. We grew closer, saw each other more often, and over the course I knew that I had to try. Even if I was completely rejected again, I had to try. I just...I just knew that I wanted to be with her every day: friend, lover, spouse--it didn't matter. If it didn't matter, then I'd risk it. If I had to, then I'd tell Foot Foot what I was too hurt and too damned proud to tell her: that I'd accept rejection, that I'd promise to remember to forget I ever proffered love, that I'd be willing to just be the friend, to listen to her problems about somebody else she loved...anything, I'd do anything, as long as she allowed me to be in her life. God, that sounds pathetic, doesn't it? Yeah, it does. I was pathetic. Couldn't help it though.
So guess what? I chickened out. I didn't tell her. Not when I told myself I was. It wasn't until much later, when we'd already promised to be with each other because, goshdarnit, we were just such good friends, that I told her. I asked her the same. Did she love me? One way or the other, wouldn't change the way I behaved, but I just had to know. StOOpid, right? Here's how it went:
In a church parking lot, at night, in the spring, in May, no one else around, the two of us standing near my truck, the church's streetlight substituting for the absent moon, she said:
"I'm sorry, Andy. I tried, I really did. I love you, I do, but I'm not in love with you. I'm so sorry. I can't help it."
You know...well...think of the funniest joke you can remember hearing. The one you laughed at the most. Was it as funny the second time? Yeah, you still laughed, and you still got it, and you still admired its keenness and sharpness and brilliant relevance and wisdom, but it didn't quite have the same gutwrenching, ROTFLMAO effect, did it?
No alcohol, no pills, and no pride, either. I kept my word. I accepted it. No, she didn't truly love me, but she would be with me, and that was enough. I'd steeled myself for this possibility, and I had pretty much given up the ghost on the belief in "true love," anyway. This time, the one I loved, the one who accepted at least part of me, the one I most enjoyed being around...this time she didn't leave. She stayed. She stayed. Assurance enough. I wouldn't be seeing her face imaginary nor hearing her voice illusionary because I would be seeing her real face and hearing her real voice from now on, whether her love--our love (to me, one-and-the-same)--was real or not. It's all sleight-of-mind, anyway.
Whenever I hear Jimmy LaFave singing this song, I hear all the aforementioned pain and loss and desperation and determination and useless, useless hope that Yearwood leaves out. His voice quivers, he clips some of his words and phrases, he pauses at off-times, his voice comes close to leaving him at times, too, hiccupping up like a pubescent boy's voice would; where Yearwood's voice takes flight and soars, LaFave's strains to rise, taking wing only long enough to be burnt by the sun, Icarus to Peters's Daedalus. It's that strain, that yearning, that quiver, that touches upon the romantic, the pathetic, the selfish, the failed magician in me. Maybe it's universal. I don't know. Nor do I much care. I'm pretty sure many of us have a certain song that brings back bittersweet memories. This one's mine. It's on this list 'cause it's good, too. It's not just nostalgia talking. Not that kind of nostalgia. I don't long for those days. It's been painful writing this vent. I've unearthed memories so deep that I've long since forgotten that I ever had them to bury. Hopefully, now that they're out, they'll dissipate into the ether. They've clouded my eyes long enough.
Oh, by the way: a couple of days after my pal Foot Foot told me that she wasn't in love with me, she came and told me that she'd discovered that now (meaning back then) she found that she did truly love me, that she was in fact in love with me. I don't remember what she said made her discover that revelation; in fact, I don't think I ever listened to her explanation. I didn't care for the reason. I only cared that she did, even though I'd have stayed by her side if she hadn't. Years later--and I don't know what prompted this--I started thinking about that night in the church parking lot, and the positive announcement a few days later. I believed her when she told me that she wasn't in love with me ('cause I remember it visibly pained her to say it), and I believed her when, a few days later, she told me that she was in love with me...though I think the only reason I believed it was because I wanted to believe it. Can a person transform love into in love in two/three days time? Hell, can a person to it at all? The latter...yeah, especially with special care and dedication over time, but the former....
Listen, Andy (I'm addressing myself now for I'm sure that's what I've been doing all along, anyway), does it really matter? Yeah, it does, though not for the reason you/I might think. Even if she wasn't in love with you, she told you that she was because she loved you. Which is like...wow. You know what kind of sacrifice that takes? Sacrificing one's chance at ever finding a person to fall in love with, one that will return that love....doing all of that just to make a friend happy? Sounds like the type of person I need to do my everbest to keep, so I better write this down as a reminder. I don't ever want her to slip out of my view, to turn into a face in the crowd. I don't ever want to hear this song again and have it take on a meaning other than the one it has now. Some songs, sometimes, need to end. Let's bury this one together, shall we?
NOTES
Sorry, I'm beat. I've nothing left tonight, so just fill in your own notes about what the asterisks represent. Let my footnotes be yours. Just once.
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