"Heard it in a Love Song"

Listening to The Marshall Tucker Band, Carolina Dreams, this morning on our newly reclaimed stereo system. 20 year old speakers restored, a friend’s turntable (fortunate for us he’s been seduced by the digital age), and a 30 year old Kenwood receiver I purchased from a Vietnamese thrift store owner who knew the value and wouldn’t bargain.

There are certain bands that give me this feeling, difficult to describe, a feeling that the sun is shining somewhere, if not here, that there are deep, clear, drinkable rivers of truth, analog, flowing, connected, not just these bits and bites of randomly, albeit efficiently chopped up and smashed back together information.

Some voices and tunes and words create an essence, some kind of rock-solidity that makes time stop. Other voices, demands, my anemic grip on what I think life is, all are put aside, while the song’s story fills all, is all.

I project myself into the future, an old woman, 90-something, blind, almost deaf, asking my great grandchild to find this song, to listen to it, as I tell her that there was a time when men and women were different. Yes, honey, they even wore different clothes; the women wanted to be feminine and the men wanted to be masculine. And then I’d have to teach her the meanings of those words.

And there was a time when it was not punishable by law to say something like:

“I’m gonna be leavin’ at the break of dawn
Wish you could come, but I don’t need no woman taggin’ along
Gonna sneak out that door, couldn’t stand to see you cry
I’d stay another year if I saw a teardrop in your eye.”

And, yes, honey, there was a time when you didn't have to ask if that was a man or a woman singing. There was a difference. A good, solid, in-your-bones difference.