It Always Will Be (2004)—take 2

7/9/2010

I was pretty thorough in my January blog on this album, so I’ll try to focus only on aspects that I ignored last time. In the title track Willie, like Proust, feels that “There is nothing I can do about this loneliness I feel when we’re apart.” I am currently reading about Proust’s response when Albertine leaves him. This problem of loss and longing and loneliness will “always be” a part of the human condition, perhaps the part, the defining aspect, the hallmark. And we will always have an obsession with “always,” because we are one-way creatures trapped within the one-way direction of time. We crave always, anything that savors of always. We just want a taste of eternity. We see glimpses of it. Tom Waits’ “Picture in a Frame” suggests the need to frame time and love within a manageable perspective, the need to bring order to the chaotic whirlwind of love’s emotions. Jimmy Day’s “The Way You See Me” also suggests the need to frame, to imagine love. The way we picture love in our mind seems to matter more than the way it really is. The frame is everything. It’s all in how you frame it. Framing love, framing life, framing time. Time frame. We want time to have a frame, but it doesn’t. Proust uses almost these exact words when he instructs Saint-Loup to fetch Albertine. Tell her I’m doing fine without her. I look great. There’s a current country song out with the same idea. Tell her anything, but don’t tell her the truth: that I’m distraught and look like a mess. The image of the river appears here again, but rivers of tears don’t fit in frames. Paula Nelson’s “Be That As it May” has Willie singing “I’ve been pining on and on about how everything is wrong.” Pining and longing. Living in a world where everything is wrong. Where wrong is the rule and right is the exception. Lukas Neslon’s “You Were It” reminds me of Proust’s Albertine. “You were it, you were the only one.” Always and only are words Willie loves, or loves to hate. Always, only, and once. “I once had a heart, now I have a song.” Once is the anithesis of always. Once is unrepeatable, eternally in the past. Once never lasts. Once is finite and human. A song is more than once, though. Art outlasts life and love and time. Art turns once into always. Art makes an always out of every once. I still don’t care for Sonny Throckmorton’s “Big Booty,” but it is another “She’s Gone” song. Like Albertine, she’s gone and she ain’t comin’ back. “And don’t come back to me a moanin’.” “My Broken Heart Belongs to You” furthers the country theme of brokenness, loss, wrongness, fallenness. We own and possess and cling to our own brokenness. It is an emptiness within a frame. Proust could be writing this song to Albertine. “I feel your presence everywhere…my fears are coming true.” Fears come true in this song, but then “Dreams come true” in the very next track. Only Willie could alternate songs in such a contradictory way. He delights in jerking our hearts around this way. Willie says he “would do anything” to make her dreams come true. Proust promises the same to Albertine. Promise the world, promise always, promise eternity. Is this one of those pretty disguises Paula Nelson writes about: “a promise is a lie with a prettier disguise.” “I know that it seems like I’m full of hot air.” Yes, it does. “But my heart is in the right place, I swear, I swear.” What place could this possibly be? In what place can a heart be that is right? And what are these oaths worth? Lucinda William writes in “Overtime” that “You won’t cross my mind and I’ll get over you overtime.” That’s what Proust hopes about Albertine, but he knows he won’t get over her. No amount of time will be enough. The double irony that time is both too long for us and too short. We can’t love long enough; we can’t sustain love for always. Conversely, perversely, time is too short for us to get over lost love. There’s too much time to stay in love, and not enough to get over it. Willie encapsulates an entire life in “Tired.” A tired life. It wears people down. All they want is rest. But it isn’t to be found in love, in time, in life. “No rest for the weary, you just move on.” But what of “Still is still moving”? How do you apply that Buddhist principle to these lives? In “Love’s the One and Only Thing,” “She tries to give up on love every morning.” And that’s the damndest thing because you can’t even give up on love. It’s a human habit you can’t quit. “A heart’ll do just about anything to feel love.” Proust couldn’t have said it better. “That loneliness, that needing and that wanting, they’re all part of the longing.” Texas is Willie’s Venice. Texas is the only place where his “spirit can be free.” Venice is that place for Proust. I guess “Midnight Rider” is a way to end this album similar to “Still is still moving.” When in doubt, just hit the road and see what happens. It may not be better, but it’ll be different, which is something. Riding night, riding time, body surfing the tides of time. Trying to last a little longer. Maybe ride it out a bit ahead.