01 May 10 Writing After Midnight

Before I came here, how did I imagine America to be?

I guess, like many who have never been here, I thought of a fast moving 24/7 society. I thought of guns. I thought of skyscrapers. I thought of wide open deserts.

Of course America has all those things, but it has so very much more besides. I didn’t think of sandy beaches with warm water, or oysters, or the wonderful Southern hospitality I’ve come to know and love so well.

Of course, that’s a romantic picture, and it doesn’t take a foreigner these days to tell anyone in the good ole US of A, that everything isn’t right in the garden. Then again it all depends on which side of the fence you’re politics are. Here is not the time and the place to be discussing that. Let’s just say, that there isn’t anywhere in the world that’s perfect, but the US is perhaps nearer to perfect for more people, more of the time, than anywhere else in the world.

What’s bought all this on, you may ask?

This evening I was listening to Willie Nelson, arguably one of America’s greatest songwriters.

I heard ‘Blue Eyes Crying In The Rain, and then I played what, is for me, perhaps one the most American of all songs “City of New Orleans”.

I know railroads can often stir up the romantic side of many folks.

Perhaps more often those folks that haven’t been in a driving cab at 3am in the middle of winter, with newspaper wrapped around themselves to keep warm, or even scraped ice from a third rail to get a train moving in the middle of a freezing February. I’ve done those things for real, and at the time, it’s not romantic.

It’s more a feeling of  ’I must be a crazy SOAB to be doing this, when I could be like all the others, and have a nine to five job, and still be in bed’.

You see, at 3.30 am in the snow and ice, it does seem like everyone else is in bed, or asleep, except the passenger in the first car back, that has just opened the window to ask  ’WTF have we stopped?’

I don’t do that job now. Do I miss it? It’s like a marriage that went wrong.  Sometimes, you think back, dwell on it, and wish with almost your heart you were back there, and you’d enjoy it this time around; most of the time, you’re glad you moved on. Anyway, life’s too short for regrets, and you’re at where you’re at now, and that’s that.

As I almost always do, I have wandered off the tracks, diverted myself at some switch in the line.

Willie Nelson was 77 yesterday.  As I already mentioned, he wrote that song, ‘City of New Orleans’ that is for me, quite simply America.

He also wrote another song that is probably one of the most romantic love songs of all time, for one of the most romantic, and dynamic country singers of all time, Patsy Cline. That song is ‘Crazy’

I know that many well-known people who have great talent have died way too young. Buddy Holly, James Dean, Nat King Cole, Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin… the list goes on.  Some of these people, had they lived,  would have simply faded away; others would have gone on to make a huge contribution to the world of popular music.  I’ve always felt sure that Patsy Cline would have been in the latter group.

As an iconic American country singer,  with singer/songwriters such as Willie Nelson writing for her, and with such a haunting melodic voice, she would have had it made.

Still dear reader, with that thought, I will bid you goodnight, as, to bastardize a well-known song title of Patsy’s, I am certainly ‘writing after midnight’.

I’d love to include a couple of mp3s to accompany this article, but I don’t think any are in the public domain, and I can’t afford to pay the assholes at the RIAA, even though I’d gladly buy Willie a few beers for letting me play one of his songs here.

Tags: blue eyes crying in the rain, city of new orleans, February, guns, new orleans, oysters, patsy cline, romantic side, sandy beaches, side of the fence, songwriters, southern hospitality, time and the place, willie nelson