Songs have meaning for the writer and the listener. Volumes have been written about which is more important.
This song, lovely though it is, reminds me of my brother's death, which happened shortly after I purchased this album.
Thirty years on now, it means much more to me than it did then.
I have lost three friends to alcohol, one by suicide this past year as a direct result of his "falling off the wagon" and the other two to the ravages on their bodies, and so young they were, in their 40s.
I had just been running errands when I came home to my mom's house, where I was staying between my junior and senior year of college. A year earlier, both my brother and I had had brushes with death and survived. That day, while driving on one of my errands, an unskilled truck driver pulled out abruptly with his flatbed, causing me to slam on my breaks and think of my younger brother's friend, whose sister had been decapitated in just such a misadventure a few years earlier. The whole rest of that outing, I was thinking about mortality, and then I came home to the news my brother had experienced it first hand.
When my brother died, I was dedicating every note and word of Woodface to memory, as I do with albums I enjoy. It lets me play the album in my head as loud as I want without the need to disturb others. The line that catches my heart is just prior to the one about pearls.
"And you know I'll be fine
Just don't ask me how it's going
Gimme time, gimme time..."
How many people have to ask you "How are you doing?" when someone close to you dies? What an absurd question.
"Well, let's see, the person I have known longest in my life as a peer, my first friend,my first rival, my first companion aside from my parents or a pet, has died at 25, leaving me, at 23, to ponder mortality on the very day I had a close call with death myself, just as it was a year ago when I was chased by a mama bear (oh yeah, I was) across a mountain on the same day someone tried to murder my brother. How am I doing? Aside from all that, I'm just peachy, thanks!"
That whole album was like having a group of friends with me, helping me through the mourning process WITHOUT the long nights of drinking. It was the album wherein Neil's big brother, Tim, reunited with him, while mine reunited with infinity.
Songs have meaning for the writer and the listener. Volumes have been written about which is more important.
This song, lovely though it is, reminds me of my brother's death, which happened shortly after I purchased this album.
Thirty years on now, it means much more to me than it did then.
I have lost three friends to alcohol, one by suicide this past year as a direct result of his "falling off the wagon" and the other two to the ravages on their bodies, and so young they were, in their 40s.
I had just been running errands when I came home to my mom's house, where I was staying between my junior and senior year of college. A year earlier, both my brother and I had had brushes with death and survived. That day, while driving on one of my errands, an unskilled truck driver pulled out abruptly with his flatbed, causing me to slam on my breaks and think of my younger brother's friend, whose sister had been decapitated in just such a misadventure a few years earlier. The whole rest of that outing, I was thinking about mortality, and then I came home to the news my brother had experienced it first hand.
When my brother died, I was dedicating every note and word of Woodface to memory, as I do with albums I enjoy. It lets me play the album in my head as loud as I want without the need to disturb others. The line that catches my heart is just prior to the one about pearls.
"And you know I'll be fine Just don't ask me how it's going Gimme time, gimme time..."
How many people have to ask you "How are you doing?" when someone close to you dies? What an absurd question.
"Well, let's see, the person I have known longest in my life as a peer, my first friend,my first rival, my first companion aside from my parents or a pet, has died at 25, leaving me, at 23, to ponder mortality on the very day I had a close call with death myself, just as it was a year ago when I was chased by a mama bear (oh yeah, I was) across a mountain on the same day someone tried to murder my brother. How am I doing? Aside from all that, I'm just peachy, thanks!"
That whole album was like having a group of friends with me, helping me through the mourning process WITHOUT the long nights of drinking. It was the album wherein Neil's big brother, Tim, reunited with him, while mine reunited with infinity.