No Ordinary Blue--Thoughts on John Prine Revisited

April 9, 2020

These are just some late night thoughts as I get my first moment to think in the past 30.

Stephen King once described finding stories like digging up gems, excavating, finding the solid center underneath. Funny thing (though I love him for reasons that overlap with Prine), I don't really think of his sprawling stories the way I think of Prine's songs, those gems, that rock underneath.

I think it's because, when you hear the epic sounds of something like "Lake Marie," you hear the little moment that makes a connection to a tale, an epiphany at its heart. As my friend Steve Messick stuck in my head without even saying it, in "Hello in There," you hear an epic sweep in that refrain about rivers growing wilder every day. "Hello in There" is a song that seems so sentimental and small you can hold it in your hand, but you hit that refrain, and you realize this song's about all of life, but particularly the whole of a certain couple's lonely life, and how that life is shoved aside in our society, where we put people away when they no longer turn a dollar, when they may be fading (or, let's be frank, when we're hit by something like Katrina or COVID-19) and if so, they need to go--"23 skidoo," "skedaadle," "beat it, old man."

It's what it's like to feel less powerful, and since that's the trajectory of life, it's as big as Lake Marie. And I mean musically; it's just, in this case, the infinity between two plucked notes and a little steel instead of "Lake Marie's" blasting outward.

And then there's that "Jesus, The Missing Years," a song about storytelling that so hilariously and precisely begins with the bar talk about "no one knew where he was?....Nobody!"

Since "Bethlehem's no place for a 12-year-old," the protagonist of this movie strikes out on his own only to find himself in a series of Chaplin-esque traps. Then he finds his way to fortune and fame and Beatles and Stones and even George Jones.

But like all such tales, it takes its dark turn, when the kid's vision gets the best of him, maybe he begins to talk about who's left out, and society shuts him down. This is what happens when the yarn hits reality, and Jesus went to heaven "awful quick."

It's a big old goofy world we live in for sure, but that fascination for the song and the story and how it gets across gave John Prine a way of snatching it up and collecting it in a ball of wonder--right down to the plucks of guitar, the playfulness of a note, the humor or pain at the edge of his voice. He found this zen that made you listen and think about whatever he was talking about, even if you didn't know what he was talking about, in a way you never thought about it before.

Of course, generally, his main ideas were clear enough, if especially in tone and timbre behind the words. He was such an easy friend to keep. I don't think any of us ever thought about what it would mean to lose him. Friends like that don't come around every day.

Never mind anyone who would start his recorded career with a goof as the best ending to a song ever--"I'm just trying to have me some fun!

Well done!

Hot dog bun!

[Bump bump]

My sister's a nun!"

Thank you for that fun, and a lifetime of gems that continue to do their work, giving us light in the darkness, illuminating our way forward.