Dear Readers,
I don’t have an iPod (RIP Steve Jobs) and even if I did, I couldn’t play it through my 2000 Toyota mini-van’s stereo system (see, I used the phrase stereo system, so you know the dinosaur part about me is true).
I bought the new Wilco CD yesterday and I played it in the car on the way to the high school open house I attended last night. I listened to this track twice, once on the way to the school, once on the way home. Wilco played this live when we saw them in Boston last month and it stuck with me…I kept wondering which song was that?
During our 15-minute Geometry “class” at the open house, I tried sneaking reading the lyrics, but no worries, my daughter will probably get an A, unlike me who flunked high school Geometry (or was that Alg II?). Sneaking lyrics wasn’t the only thing I did in high school to get into trouble and I can only hope my amazing, intense, creative, energetic, artistic daughter goes a better way than I did back then.
This song, I don’t know what it’s about, but I think this is the true gem of the album, the one for the ages. There are a couple of lines that kill the hell outta me:
Outside I look lived in/like the bones in a shrine–it’s immediate, sharp and soft at the same time, and reminds me of churches in Prague and I am cold for my father/frozen underground
I’ve lived without my father for so long, lived without knowing him for so much of my life, but I was missing him and picturing him yesterday. I pulled out a bin of old photos.
I forget the damage, you know, the damage of losing a parent when you’re still pretty young. I don’t grieve for him any more, but I am today. How death defines us, underneath all of the geometry and the words and anything else we layer on top.
One Sunday Morning
This is how I tell it
Oh, but it’s long
One Sunday morning
Oh, one son is gone
I can see where they’re dawning
Over the sea
My father said what I had become
No-one should be
Outside I look lived in
Like the bones in a shrine
How am I forgiven?
Oh, I’ll give it time
This, I learned without warning
Holding my brow
In time he thought I would kill him
Oh, but I didn’t know how
I said it’s your god I don’t believe in
No, your Bible can’t be true
Knocked down by the long life
He cried, ‘I fear what waits for you’
I can hear those bells
Spoken and gone
I feel relief, I feel well
Now he knows he was wrong
I am cold for my father
Frozen underground
Jesus, I wouldn’t bother
He belongs to me now
Something sad keeps moving
So I wandered around
I fell in love with the burden
Holding me down
Bless my mind, I miss
Being told how to live
What I learned without knowing
How much more that I owe that I can give
This is how I tell it
Oh, but it’s long
One Sunday morning
One son is gone
twinklysparkles 