#238) "Remember When" by Alan Jackson - It's certainly true that you can get too sentimental in life, too sappy, too morbid, moribund, and morose. It's all too easy to fall into a pattern (often without realizing) in which you're not merely looking back, but dwelling on something long gone that no amount of emotional black magic will ever bring back. Life offers only forward progress, so keep moving, keep moving, keep moving.
It's no secret certain songs aid greatly in the application of sappy, sentimental sorrow, and as a rule I do everything I can to avoid them. But like with nearly everything else in life, there are a few notable exceptions, songs that lean toward sentimental rather than sappy (sentimentality being a less blinding shade of the same emotional impulse), and one of them is Alan Jackson's "Remember When". I must confess, it's on a short list of songs almost guaranteed to get me tearing up if the light is just right.
Sure, it's easy to dismiss as cheesy, a Hallmark card set to music, but that's mostly if you don't like country music and are disposed to dismissing the entire genre out of hand. I haven't been that way since I worked in country radio and - stuck listening to it as part of my job (rather than just hearing it drone from a radio in the background) - realized, hmm, some of this isn't so bad. It was a revelation; I'd spent my entire childhood believing otherwise.
I think for me it's not so much what "Remember When" says, but how it says it. The mewling mandolin, the sturdily constructed orchestration, Jackson's tenderly father-like vocal, all seem to conspire to preserve something, or fix something, put something right...like a musical bed sheet snapped in the air, falling gently and protectively, in a room where time stands still, nobody has to say goodbye, and everyone stays the same forever.
Of course, that's not even close to how life plays out, but through the ordeal of this sometimes heartbreaking mortal coil, in which time flies by, every has to say goodbye at some time or another, and nobody gets (or wants) to stay the same, most of us carry a reasonable expectation: that amidst a certain amount of ceremony, we will grow, live, grow again through our children, grow old and die, hopefully with memories intact and most of those not too painful. "Remember When" taps deeply and powerfully into this universally anticipated (and sought) story arc, giving it the architecture we crave.
Yes, you can dwell too much on the past, but at the end of the day sentimentality, like humor, is among the traits that distinguish us from animals and, at least every once in a while, our ability to allow waypoints in life to blossom into exquisitely sentimental moments is what makes it worth living.
Without some "architecture" applied to the process of living, nothing really matters. We simply live, and die. And that can be a devastating thought...especially if the light is just right.
"Remember when old ones died and new were born / And life was changed, disassembled, rearranged..."
#239 "Choices" by George Jones - Three words: drinking fucking sucks.
Make no mistake, I had my moments in younger days - nights I don't remember, or nights I wish I could forget, hellacious hangovers, the whole bit. Alcohol has led me to plenty of bad choices - passing out in places I shouldn't have, with women I shouldn't have, saying things I normally wouldn't, hearing about them the next day and cringing between dry heaves.
But I was always merely a weekend warrior type...I could go out, hang out, get plastered, have the greatest (or worst) night of my life, and then be good for a week or two, sometimes more, before I felt any urge to drink again.
It never became a lifestyle. I rarely drank alcohol with dinner. I never drank alcohol just to relax. Never drank to escape. In fact, the opposite. Moments of turmoil in my life (financial, romantic, whatever...) have always been met with an urge to get more sober, not less, as sober as I could be. I don't like not to be in control of myself, especially when things are shitty.
And honestly, I never saw much point to drinking at all unless there were women present...meaning, if the night was going to be just four hairy asses sitting around a high top table in a grungy tavern, insipid banter broken only by an occasional glance up at the TV above the bar for the score, I'd have just as soon drank water all night, or Dr. Pepper.
Sometimes I would drink water, or Dr. Pepper, even if there were women around. Talk about exquisite: at bar close, when everyone else was slinking, stumbling, puking and pissing out the back door, watching for cops, praying to get home safely, I would jump into my car, clear eyed and big as you please, light a cigarette, crank the radio, and take a late night drive along a country road. I was kind of a weirdo I guess, to be 21, 22, 23, and get so excited by doing that...and yet, not really. Country roads at three in the morning are gorgeous, and whatever the reason, staying sober guaranteed I would never get an OWI, or kill someone, or kill myself.
I know it's not totally a matter of choice. Alcohol is a drug like any other. Some people can handle it, some people can't. But from what I've seen of some of those "some people" over the years, I'm thankful (sincerely...) that I've always preferred to be sober...or at least been okay being sober.
Released in 1999, "Choices" was George Jones' twilight catharsis. The singer of "White Lightning" was in his late sixties by then, and "Choices" was a somber acknowledgment of what too much white lightning, over time, can lead to. (Fucking sucks...) Around the time of its release, Jones was involved in a serious drunk driving accident, which underscored the song's relevance and message. I think it says everything that needs to be said about alcohol as a lifestyle, without (and this is important) overstatement or preaching.
"I was tempted, by an early age I found I liked drinking, and I never turned it down / There were loved ones, but I turned them all away / Now I'm living and dying with the choices I've made..."
