"A Little Bit Of Everything"

It’s about that damn chicken wing.

Records reveal themselves to you over time, you don’t digest them fully on the first play, you can get an insight listening even decades later. That’s the thrill of discovering a great new album, the way it reveals itself to you, like a new love.

It was the first story in "A Little Bit Of Everything" that hooked me.

Then the third, about the girl writing invitations for her wedding.

Then the second…

There’s an older man who stands in a buffet line
He is smiling and he’s holding out his plate
And the further he looks back into his timeline
That hard road that led him to today

This is all set-up. Free food at a homeless shelter. Someone who’s down on his luck. And in today’s society there’s no sympathy for the downtrodden, belief is if they just put one foot in front of the other, put on a happy face, everything would all work out. But one of the problems with getting older is what happens in all that time. The attrition from events you may have had no part in.

Making up for when his bright future had left him
Making up for the fact that his only son is gone
And letting everything out once his server asks him,
‘Have you figured out yet what it is you want?’

They say a child should never predecease a parent, that you just can’t recover from this.

We all start off with a bright future. And then it’s downhill from there.

They don’t tell you this. They tell you everybody can be President.

But then you get cut from the Little League team. A thousand little cuts follow, until it’s hard to keep your optimism.

And when you’re out of school, no one cares. Maybe we focus on the young in this country because they’re the only ones not infected with loss, the ones who blindly still have hope.

And we expect the man here to barely be able to speak, to be so depressed as to only be able to nod. But then he says…

I want a little bit of everything
The biscuits and the beans
Whatever helps me to forget about
The things that brought me to my knees
So pile on those mashed potatoes
And an extra chicken wing
I’m having a little bit of everything

The beaming idiots cannot acknowledge loss. But the protagonist here has no problem delineating his less than perfect past. But then, unexpectedly, he expresses hope, we see a light inside that inspires us.

And the problem is the MP3 is nowhere near as good as the live performance. In concert, Taylor Goldsmith explodes when he hits the line about the "chicken wing", as if it’s a million dollars, acknowledging it’s the little things in life that get you by.

I think of nothing so much as the Chris Rock routine about the big piece of chicken…reserved for his father, and himself at the end of the show.

The big piece of chicken

___________________

"So Well"

When you’re in your twenties, even into your thirties, you’re still searching, looking for not only love, but your place in the world. The dead ends are depressing, I’d never go back there ever. All those wasted nights nursing a beer in a bar where no romantic activity was ever going to transpire. Meeting someone and getting my hopes up and having that be it, not even a phone conversation thereafter. Despite what the media tells you, being old is great. You know how the game works. That love is never perfect, there’s no such thing as a soul mate and society is based on hype, people selling crap to get ahead. You know what you like, there’s a plethora of friends and activities, the only problem is the sand is running out of the hourglass.

So I can’t really relate to the lyrics of "So Well". I’m in a relationship, of long term, with no obvious end in sight. I’m content, I live a 3-D life. But listening I realized I never moved on to the next phase of life, children. That’s what replaces the angst of the club, all those wasted days and nights, the excitement of birth, the angst of how your progeny are going to turn out. That’s where the focus of oldsters goes. As for retirement, today few can afford it and kids never quite leave the roost so you can be in this phase forever. But what if you don’t ever enter it?

So teen movies don’t quite resonate anymore. I’m long out of high school. And although that exploratory phase of finding out who I am is gone, I do remember the pain. And that’s the subject of "So Well". I’m in a no-man’s land, a purgatory caught between two worlds, and that’s weird, there’s no place on the continuum for the childless, and I now know why oldsters can no longer sing this material, why it takes twenty and thirtysomethings.

I am an old, old sailor
With a future much shorter than his past
I live alone, I do not wander
A world that slips further from my grasp

I know, I know, the sailor is old. But the singer is young and inexperienced. The point is after a few bumps and bruises, especially after twenty five, you feel old, like time is running out. Age is not a number, but a state of mind.

And from my home I watch the people
Struggle through the burden of each day
That’s where Marie, sweet and gentle
Smiles to me when she passes on her way

It takes very little to give someone hope. A smile, a glance. The sailor is feeling adrift, land is receding from his view, but Marie tethers him to society.

And she does it so well
She pulls me out of time’s cruel spell
For long enough to finally tell
That nothing is wrong

There’s a thin line between elation and despair, and vice versa. One phone call can change your mood completely, one look.

"I am a boy, I am a child
With those simple dreams still burning in my heart
And I’ve known Marie for a while
She shows me where all my beginnings are

It’s worst when you hook the fish, because you risk it slipping off the hook. The sailor is starting to relax, marinate in his good feelings. He’s become optimistic, he sees the potential in life. That’s what human relationships will do to you.

And once a week she takes me dancing
She shows me friends and places I never knew
And it always ends watching her leaving
With men she knows that don’t understand what loneliness will make you do

In movies the guy gets the girl, happily ever after is not a goal, but an entitlement.

And there’s a minority of beautiful people who fend off the opposite sex with a stick, but if you want to know the emotional condition of the average male, pay attention to this song. You get your hopes up, but then you find you were never really in the game at all.

I know it well. The dreaded friend zone. I’m so busy observing their boundaries that I never get to cross them.

Spotify link