Who started out so young and strong only to surrender.
I grew up thinking I was born in the wrong time. The music, the things, the surroundings I had were not always of the age I was in. Music of the 60’s and 70’s filled my life instead of the music of the 80’s and 90’s that I was living in. To this day I’m typically twenty years behind musical changes.
My father always told me he that “saw” me in several songs from his youth. Jackson Browne’s “The Pretender” being one of them. He never explained it any further, and so I will be spending the rest of my life trying to solve the riddle he left me with.
Fate gave me a gift however, as two days prior to him coming to the area I discovered, and immediately purchased some decent seats to his show. Had dad still been with us, I would have taken him. I ended up asking 3 people, eventually going with an old work friend. I may have upended her plans for the evening, but who really wants to go to the gym over a concert?
We hadn’t seen each other in the flesh for around five years. So it was good just to be in the same space with each other again.
Back to the subject at hand, there are two lyrics that I think I’ve nailed down that my father saw in me:
“Caught between the longing for love
And the struggle for the legal tender”
“I’m gonna be a happy idiot
And struggle for the legal tender”
I have to say, my father wasn’t necessarily wrong with his findings of his less than 10 year old son. One of my largest struggles has been the balance between love and struggling for that legal tender. Happy however? That’s one descriptor that has never suited me or my personality.
As a now almost forty two year old, the same things can be said about me. But my old mans impression of his boy will forever stick with him.
I shot a few snippets from the show, but this is the only song I shot fully. I only hope I continue to make my old man proud. I hope that he sees me from wherever he is and is proud of all that I’ve had to overcome since he left us. I hope he is proud that his son still doesn’t give up to the challenges put in his life.
In the end, these seem to be the lyrics that have pinned me, much like my old man:
“Gonna pack my lunch in the morning
And go to work each day
And when the evening rolls around
I’ll go on home and lay my body down
And when the morning light comes streaming in
I’ll get up and do it again, Amen
Say it again, Amen”