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Ride the blue wind high and free
She'll lead you down through misery
And leave you low, come time to go
Alone and low as low can be
And if I had a nickel I'd find a game
And if I won a dollar I'd make it rain
And if it rained an ocean I'd drink it dry
And lay me down dissatisfied
It's legs to walk and thoughts to fly
Eyes to laugh and lips to cry
A restless tongue to classify
All born to grow and grown to die
So tell my baby I said so long
Tell my mother I did no wrong
Tell my brother to watch his own
And tell my friends to mourn me none
I'm chained upon the face of time
Feeling full of foolish rhyme
There ain't no dark till something shines
I'm bound to leave the dark behind
Ride the blue wind high and free
She'll lead you down through misery
Leave you low, come time to go
Alone and low as low can be
She'll lead you down through misery
And leave you low, come time to go
Alone and low as low can be
And if I had a nickel I'd find a game
And if I won a dollar I'd make it rain
And if it rained an ocean I'd drink it dry
And lay me down dissatisfied
It's legs to walk and thoughts to fly
Eyes to laugh and lips to cry
A restless tongue to classify
All born to grow and grown to die
So tell my baby I said so long
Tell my mother I did no wrong
Tell my brother to watch his own
And tell my friends to mourn me none
I'm chained upon the face of time
Feeling full of foolish rhyme
There ain't no dark till something shines
I'm bound to leave the dark behind
Ride the blue wind high and free
She'll lead you down through misery
Leave you low, come time to go
Alone and low as low can be
Lyrics submitted by -jeramie-
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Rex Bell, sometimes spelled "Wrecks" as a homophone for Rex, was a friend to Townes and an original partner of the Old Quarter.
The lines of this song are pure poetry and can't be matched for meaning by any amount of verbosity. But I think, in essence, what Townes wanted to get across is a love of life coupled with a sense of the futility of life. That when the futility of life is not just accepted but embraced, and one lives for experience, that is the highest form of living. Initially the lines of this song are full of seeming contradictions in emotional contrasts:
Ride the blue wind high and free she'll lead you down through misery leave you low come time to go alone and low as low can be
But in the context of a full life, these contrasts aren't contradictions at all. Misery exists because it contrasts with "high and free", and vice versa, because "there ain't no dark 'til something shines".
Life is becoming. Life is always needing or wanting more. And in the end life is death. "if it rained an ocean I'd drink it dry and lay me down dissatisfied" and "all born to grow and grown to die". Life is like a song, or a story, or a poem, in that there is always a beginning, a middle, and an end. And the ending, even just the fact of an ending, is vital. The song is about living a full life: beginning, middle, and end. It's about not sacrificing the direction of your story in an attempt to prolong the middle.