The Ghost (Part 3) (2005)

Of course Willie would “Blame It On the Times.” Time itself is to blame. Time is our curse, our fall, the result of original sin. “Yesterday’s gone and there’s No Tomorrow in Sight,” but “I hope we can salvage a few memories.” And yet, Willie often has yesterday in sight. Salvaging memories is a way to keep yesterday always in sight. Yesterday is better than tomorrow, more reliable, more permanent and predictable and controllable. Only Willie would think he needs a “new way to cry.” “All my tears have fallen, I can cry no more. I’ve cried so much since you have said goodbye. The pressure keeps on fillin’ up within my heart. It grows and grows, but still my eyes are dry. Though my heart is breaking, tears refuse to start, so I’ve gotta find a new way to cry. I’ve gotta find a new way to relieve the pain. It just can’t stay forever locked inside. And until I forget you and can smile again, I’ve gotta find a new way to cry.” I’m not sure what was wrong the old way. He’s made a career of crying. Maybe the blues and honky tonk replaces the public mourners, the psalms. It is a way to grieve. It is a new way to cry. To relieve the pain. It’s what the courtly love tradition was. It’s what Petrarch and the troubadours were doing. Inventing new and better and more efficient ways to cry. “Maybe in time you’ll change your mind and decide to love me again.” There it is again: time and mind. “I’ll just hang around till it’s over and hope it never ends.” Foolishly hoping that time won’t slip away. Foolishly believing the old lie that you’ll love me forever. Foolishly hoping that forever will last longer this time. Ironically, time does change minds, but usually for the worse. And why should we believe that Willie will really stay around. How can he stay around when he’s always on the road? He claims that he’ll never leave her, that he’s stubborn that way. Sounds like “Broken Promises” waiting to happen. He even breaks promises he makes to himself. “A broken promise always means someone will surely cry, and I know who that someone will be.” Really? It seems about fifty-fifty. Who’s always leaving whom? “Happiness Lives Next Door,” always next door, always around the bend, always out of reach, always elusive. And yet it is always tantalizingly close, next door. Never down the street or the next town over. Always next door. So “Let’s Pretend we’re strangers for tonight. Let’s pretend we never hurt each other.” Let’s lie to each other about our love. “Let’s pretend our love is just beginning, make believe that it was true love at first sight. And even though our love has never really ended, let’s pretend we’re stranger’s for a night.” Willie says he needs a new way to cry, but “[He’s] Going to Lose A Lot of Teardrops” this way. “While you make up your mind” I’ll just wait “forevermore.” Crying all the while. “Perhaps in time our love could still be.” Willie will just wait forever, play the patient housewife. “I’ve been trying so hard to forget you, but this chore of forgetting I find has me burning both ends of the candle, and fighting a battle with time. What I’d give just to sleep for a moment, but it’s a luxury that I can’t afford, for I know that I would just dream about you, and my tears would start falling once more.” Willie’s career is a battle with time. Burning both ends of the candle is his way of harassing time, trying to force its hand, its healing hands. And yet forgetting time is such a chore, almost as hard as remembering it. Hard to stop it from slipping away, and hard to give it the slip. This song sounds like one of his demos with just vocal and guitar. Probably the sparest on disk 3. This version of “Go Away” sounds similar to the version on the Complete Liberty recordings, but without the annoying back-up do-wop singers. “Go away…and let me cry alone.” “I’d be crazy if I took you back again, but this foolish heart…” Crazy plus foolish = crying. “It’s not right for me to love you…I wish I were far away from you.” And yet happiness is next door. I have four excellent versions of “What Can You Do To Me Now,” and it’s a toss up which one’s best. One of Willie’s sparest most haunting songs. “You broke my pride and made me cry out loud.” Willie cries uncle to time and love. Willie has gone to the dogs, faced his own death and mortality, and it has made him stronger, Buddhist, stoic. Ditto for “She’s Not For You.” I have four versions, and all are excellent. “She told you she found heaven in your eyes. We’ll I think it only fair to warn you, that sometimes she lies.” Sometimes? Some-Times time slips away. “She just looks for greener pastures now and then. And when she grows tired, she knows old faithful will take her back again.” “I’m used to feeling blue.” That could be a song in itself: “Used to Feeling Blue.” I used to feel blue, and now I’m used to it. Like Buddha, like Marcus Aurelius. To philosophize is to learn to die, to be used to the blues. But is this just another word for being numb? “What a Way to Live,” and yet what is the alternative? What other way can you live? This song also appears on “Me and the Drummer” (I prefer the version on that album). “I’m so ashamed of my eyes ‘cause they still cry for you after they both watched my hand wave goodbye to you. I’ve told them time and time again, that this will never do, and I’ve told them how you always laugh at teardrops. I’m so ashamed of my arms for missin’ you. Last night I woke up just in time to see them reach for you.” Willie’s ashamed at his tears, but he hasn’t been shamed enough in 50 years to stop. He keeps right on cryin’. If at first you don’t succeed (in grieving), cry, cry again. The back-up vocals make me cry. “Shelter of My Arms” is another spare recording. Dreams and memories will “carry me through eternity.” They are all I need. I know “it’s just a dream that soon will end.” And yet my dreams and memories are real enough, realer than reality, and more eternal. “You come home just long enough to laugh at me.” I still love you as before, and yet I don’t care? How can I love and not care?