Moonlight Becomes You (1993)

Not sure why it isn’t as good as Stardust, but what album is? Jacques Barzun defines sentimentality as emotion that doesn’t lead to action, which would seem to describe Hamlet and Willie Nelson perfectly. “Sentimental Journey” could be the title of Willie’s musical career. It is, by definition, a journey in the mind. Like the lovers frozen in time on the Grecian Urn in Keats’ poem, in that ecstatic moment just before the kiss. This is where Willie’s music tries to take you and keep you for as long as you will listen. He seems to be suggesting, you can always go there in your mind, in his music. Songs can take you there.

Willie opens and closes this album with two of his own tunes, but the rest are jazz and pop standards. The harmonica is noticeably absent, but the piano makes this album distinctive. I prefer the version of “December Day” on Yesterday’s Wine. “Moonlight Becomes You” is pleasant and well executed, but I can’t put my finger on why it doesn’t move me the way Stardust does. The snare and bass provide a pleasing platform for the piano and Willie’s vocal. I’m struck again by how Willie transitions from a pop or jazz standard to a more traditional country song like “Afraid.” He seems unafraid of switching genres mid album using the same instruments. “A heart gets careless/When vows are made,” and the just time slips away. Vows of eternity disappear in a moment. We desire and fear eternity. Willie claims that if he had “The Heart of a Clown” he’d “laugh every time you made me blue” and “you wouldn’t see me cry the way you do.” So once again Willie is talking about crying, Petrarch style, but he has lived his life, hakuna matata, by laughing to avoid the blues. Later he claims you can’t play a sad song on a banjo, and it would seem equally true that you can’t sing a sad song if you are Willie Nelson. He is a human banjo. Incapable of being sad for long. There is never any danger that he will be “Permanently Lonely.” This takes something from the credibility of the song, as Chesterton maintains that a thing must be irrevocable, permanent, for it to be truly romantic, truly risky. Otherwise it is just sentimentality. Nothing is at stake but the collapsing of my platonic ideals, my dreams, my memories. Unless of course the memories are as real as reality, or realer. Some have claimed so (Lewis and others).

Again, this album is so smooth, competent, relaxing, and pleasant, but somehow not moving. I guess I just want more heartache, more fiddle. Johnny Gimble’s on this album, but not enough. This album “puts the blues on the run,” but that’s the problem. I like the blues, and I think Willie, like Keats, is also “half in love with easeful death.” Maybe this album succumbs too much to the temptation of sleep, of Lethe, the loss of memory, the opium-like numbing of pain. Ignorance is bliss, but there may be too much bliss on this album. “I’ll Keep On Loving You” is a perfect book end to songs like “The Grass is Blue.” One type of song asserts “I’m not sad you left me; I’m just fine” (and if you believe that, “I’ve got some ocean front property in Arizona”). The other type asserts that “I will always love you,” as long as the sun keeps shining (which of course it will). How can you sing and mean both kinds of songs?

“I never thought my heart could be so yearnin’/ Why did I decide to roam?” That’s the $64,000 question. Yearnin’ and roamin’? Why do we do it? Why is the grass always greener? Road/home, road/home, road/home? Or home motel. Still is still moving and moving is stillness.

Willie writes and sings on the last track, “Never think evil thoughts of anyone/ It’s just as wrong to think as to say.” Very sermon-on-the-mount-like sentiments. The spirit over the letter of the law. Lusting in your heart as bad as adultery. And yet, the converse is not true, that therefore it is the thought that counts. It is in the negative, but not in the affirmative. That “You were always on my mind” means nothing if you never call or write. Words and thoughts without actions are meaningless. And yet there is something to this god-like perspective. The view that transcends time, which Willie and Proust and all great artists aspire to, and sometimes even seem to achieve briefly, when they are at the height of their art, they give us a glimpse of this all-encompassing Walt Whitman-esque prospect. I still like the version of “In God’s Eyes” on Yesterday’s Wine better, but I admire how Willie keeps returning to his old songs and using them in unique, structural ways to frame his new material. This recursiveness of his career keeps him forever young. Spiraling back through old material even as he propels forward to new material.