Everly Brothers – When Will I be Loved 1983

Comparing this version to the source material from 23 years earlier, it’s easy to see how even the creators of the song were influenced by Linda’s approach to it. She made it better.

So bless her, for that among other things.

***

It’s been a long elliptical and enjoyable loop into … sources, even if it did end up in the dire straits of a latter-day Yoknapatawpha on the macro level, and some personal cattiness on my part, on the micro.

I don’t know whether that bitchy side of me is unhealthy, exactly, but I’d rather have my head in some other space early on a Sunday.

So let me loop again, back onto my own crafted sources, influenced by a story I heard on a repeat episode of This American Life yesterday. It’s a tale of literal heresy, not just against the Commander or a not-better Father, but against the Lord Hisself.

I dwell in the sometimes radio-active fallout of all these people and all these things they made.

“one who
holds a doctrine at variance
with established or dominant standards”
(from Greek hairetikos “able to choose”; hairein “to take”)

Thus for now I decide against the petty parts of my self, but to nevertheless embrace that self as hérétique instead.

Possibly it is the most foundational or primordial of my identities, but it says nothing about what I am for, only what I am against.

What I am for requires at least one doctrine of my own, to have and to hold. Fortunately I have at least two, even if it is unfortunate that the alpha and the beta are sometimes at odds with each other, and not just with the omega.

• Anprim
• Belletrist
• ?

These variant doctrines I grasp so dearly are, as doctrines tend to be, very abstract critters, not at all like actual ducks.

In the con-crete world I have been opening boxes, some of which were sealed long ago.

It may be best in the moment to let the kinds of things I’m finding in them speak for themselves.

Except to say that over forty years ago, that tiny cast iron was one of the very few things I carried with me, in a small yellow backpack, when I left for good on the most serious hitchhiking trip I ever took.

And now I will make eggs in it again, not over a hobo campfire, but on a fine gas stove in a house that is older than I am.

I wake to sleep. And take my waking slow.

Sometimes.

I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I feel my fate in what I cannot fear.
I learn by going where I have to go.

We think by feeling. What is there to know?
I hear my being dance from ear to ear.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Of those so close beside me, which are you?
God bless the Ground! I shall walk softly there,
And learn by going where I have to go.

Light takes the Tree; but who can tell us how?
The lowly worm climbs up a winding stair;
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.

Great Nature has another thing to do
To you and me; so take the lively air,
And, lovely, learn by going where to go.

This shaking keeps me steady. I should know.
What falls away is always. And is near.
I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow.
I learn by going where I have to go.

That’s a good song too.

***

In Order To Form A More Perfect Lyric

I filled their kitchens and living rooms
With my schemes and my broken wheels
It was never clear how far or near
The gates to my citadel lay
They were cutting from stone some dreams of their own
But they listened to mine anyway

I’m not sure
what i’m trying to say