The Ghost (Part 1) (2005)

The liner notes describe this disc as “a collection of laid-back Nelson recordings from the 1960s and ‘70s.” I’ll need to do some research to figure out where these recordings actually come from. To that end, here is the track list:

1. I Let My Mind Wander

2. December Days

3. I Can’t Find the Time

4. I Didn’t Sleep a Wink

5. You Wouldn’t Cross the Street

6. Suffering Silence

7. I Just Don’t Understand

8. Rainy Day Blues

9. Night Life

10. The Ghost

11. Following Me Around

12. End of Understanding

13. Will You Remember Mine

14. So much to Do

15. Is There Something On Your Mind

16. Healing Hands of Time

This version of “I Let My Mind Wander” is new to me. I have four others, but this ranks up with the best. Willie’s vocal, steel guitar, and an understated bass, snare, and piano combine to form the near-perfect setting for his melancholy lyrics. This version of “December Day” is as understated as Willie gets. What other artist gets measured by how understated he is, and yet Willie seems to be competing with himself to see how understated he can be. Like the Rothko’s Chapel guy, Morton Feldman, always trying to get his orchestra to play softer. Willie always wants to get more spare, more stark, more raw. And yet, there is a limit to how spare a recording can be. At some point, you can’t strip any more away. You can’t get any more naked. You can always add more clothes. Addition is infinite, but subtraction is finite. Willie seems to be battling this limitation. I reviewed this version of “I Can’t Find the Time” on “Love and Pain,” same with “I Didn’t Sleep a Wink.” “You Wouldn’t Cross the Street” also appears on “Me and Paul,” and “Me and the Drummer.” Interesting that there seems to be a connection between these three albums. “Love and Pain” is a mere compilation, but the title is suggestive. Not sure who came up with the title, but it does capture Willie’s music, the intersection of love and pain, which is the battleground of time and memory. This is the only recording I have of “Suffering in Silence.” Willie encourages her to “suffer in silence like me,” and yet Willie’s whole career is suffering in public, making suffering into art. The steel guitar almost sounds out of tune, if that’s possible. As if crying and weeping could be out of tune. “Speak no bitter words. The world offers no sympathy. Though trouble surrounds you. And you long to be heard.” This is Willie’s stoic, Buddhist philosophy. “I’ll give you a lesson in living.” Willie’s whole career is giving this stoic, Buddhist lesson in living. A guide to escape the wheel of suffering. “Suffer in silence and smile” like the beatific Buddha. Ah ha! I figured out where I’d heard “I Just Don’t Understand.” It appears on the reggae album “Countryman.” I love the “do you mind.” Willie is obsessed with mind. “Mind your own business.” “Mind your manners.” “Always on my mind.” Mind has so many meanings and connotations. Mind can mean pay attention. Our mind is the organ that focuses our attention beyond pure instinct. Memory is the thing animals lack. Elephants aside, animals use memory for survival, for us, it just as often brings pain as we contemplate the past and future. We don’t have the blissfully ignorant ability to live only in the present. It is our blessing and curse. It is the subject of every Willie Nelson song. Could it be that consciousness, which is the human condition, is simply the awareness of time, the awareness of the past and the future? Here he combines “mind” and “understand.” Do you mind, as in, will it bother you, and that’s exactly what our minds do: bother us, plague us, worry us. “I’m a worried man” is another favorite reggae song of Willie’s via Johnny Cash. Our minds don’t understand, and we can’t understand our own minds (see Walker Percy’s “Lost in the Cosmos”). We can’t make up our minds; we are made up by the hardwiring in our minds. In “Rainy Day Blues” Willie asserts that you can’t outrun the blues. A world without rain and blues is a utopia, that is, a no-place. It doesn’t exist. This version sounds very similar to the 1959 version on The Early Years collection of Liberty recordings. The mix is very different, but the recording may be the same. So maybe I need to get all compilations because the mixes vary so much that they become almost different songs. The mixing makes a huge difference. Sort of like craft beers in cans versus bottles versus kegs versus growlers. The containers matter. The temperature, the glass. It’s part of what makes “Stardust” so great. I have about a half dozen versions of this song, but I’ll have to do a side-by-side comparison to rank them accurately. This one ranks up there with the best. Great to hear a sax along with Willie’s vocal. I now have almost a dozen versions of “Night Life,” but this is the same one from The Complete Liberty Recordings. “The Ghost” may be the sparest recording on a very spare album. This sounds like one of his early demo recordings. Just Willie’s voice and Trigger. “The ghost of our old love appears…It laughs while I listen for the breaking of day.” Not only do our memories haunt us, but they laugh at us, mock us. Time itself seems to be mocking our finitude. Life itself, the human condition itself. Hamlet.

Interesting that “Following Me Around” follows the song “The Ghost.” Her memory haunts Willie like a ghost in both songs. Why does memory do that to us? Why does it haunt us? Why do we compare it to a ghost? “She always follows me from town to town. At least her memory’s following me around. And whenever I clear my mind so she can see, I feel her love come rushing into me. And I know that I will never be alone. It looks as though her memory’s found a home.” Here Willie combines notions of memory with home. Restless memory’s come home to roost, but it’s a peculiar homecoming. Homecoming as haunting. A haunted homecoming. Memories stalk us, won’t leave us alone, worry us. The horns on this one seem a bit inappropriate. I think this version also appears on “Naked Willie.” The horns are removed on “Naked Willie,” though. And ITUNES says it is a 1970 recording. The only other version of “End of Understanding” I have is on The Highway Men: The Road Goes on Forever (1995). I prefer the 1995 version (and have blogged about it on the blog for that album). “Will You Remember Mine” also shows up on “Sweet Memories” (of course) and “Who’ll Buy My Memories.” This may be my favorite of the three. Spare as can be. Willie’s vocals are at their best. And I don’t know if it is Mickey Raphael, but a harmonica makes a fitting appearance. “So Much to Do” may be the same version as appears on The Complete Atlantic Recordings. This is the only version I have of “Is There Something on Your Mind.” You’re always on my mind, but what’s on yours. I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours. Her heart and mind are separate. “Is there someone from the past you can’t forget, dear.” A ghost? A local memory? Someone “following you around”? Everyone seems to be haunted, chased by, memories in these songs. “I can’t compete with memories.” Memories of love are stronger than real love. “While there’s still time, is there something on your mind?” And yet memories are outside time, beyond time. This version of “Healing Hands of Time” seems the sparest of them all. It could be the same one as that on “Country Willie—His Own Songs.” Hard to tell. A different mix, though. Raises the question, though, how can time haunt and heal at the same time. A haunted healing.