Seashores of Old Mexico (1987)—take 2

Merle’s title track, like the album and Willie’s career and style in general, has “no destination in mind.” There’s that obsession with mind again. What would it mean to have the destination in your mind? “The border meant freedom, a new life, and romance, and that’s why we thought we should go. Start our lives over on the seashores of old Mexico.” Like Proust going to Venice. The temptation, the allure, the seduction of starting fresh and new and clean. “Things will blow over on the seashores of old Mexico” the way they blow over on the road, the way they blow past you. Merle’s “Without You On My Side” reminds me of several of Willie’s songs where he says he needs a woman by his side to keep the memories and the past at bay. It seems that things don’t just blow over on the seashores of old Mexico or on the road. “The bad dreams wouldn’t leave me, and it would all start to grieve me” without a woman on my side. “When Times Were Good” remains my favorite song on the album and one of my very favorite Willie recordings. This song and the final pages of the sixth volume of Proust’s “In Search of Lost Time” both deal with resurrecting impressions from the past and trying to give them permanence. Willie, Hag, and Proust conclude that art is the only way to do that, and they resolve to “write one for the memory.” Merle’s “Jimmy the Broom” describes a man who “came to the city to forget a woman…[but] not even the havoc of the nightlife of Reno could keep her memory away, so he turned to the bottle, and somehow it deafened her call, but Jimmy the Broom never lived to be free of it all.” Another man fighting away memories, trying to keep them at bay, drowning them out with booze. But nothing completely frees a man of these memories. We’re either in search of lost time or trying to escape from it, trying to lose it. Either way we lose. Willie sings “Yesterday” on Live Country Music Concert (1966), and I discuss the lyrics in that blog from May. Twenty years later he sings it again. In 1966 he wasn’t half the man he used to be, so in 1987 he must be one fourth of the man he used to be. The notion that “Yesterday came suddenly” is a striking one. Normally we think of our kids growing up too fast and time flying by. You blink and they’re grown. And yet here, the past comes back suddenly, like those precious memories that return to Proust unbidden of the Madeleine soaked in tea. So the future rushes up to meet us, but the past rushes to us from the other side as well. And we get caught in the undertow, in the conflicting gravitational forces of time (centripetal and centrifugal). If we could only fly, if we only knew “which way to turn and go.” We “feel so good” and then we “feel so bad.” We could “bid this place goodbye.” Not sure how flying would help us avoid loneliness. “Tell me things get better somewhere up the way. Just dismal thinking on a dismal day. Sad songs for us to bear.” If we could only fly, we could flit back and forth between the road and home, we could commute between the foreign and the familiar. We could have the best of both worlds. And if we could fly fast enough, faster than the speed of light, we could outrun time and loneliness. Merle’s “Shotgun and a Pistol” just tells a good story. In “Love Makes a Fool of Us All” “The one that he’s tied to is the one that he’s lied to.” Love makes liars, cheaters, beggars of us all. It’s funny that way. It makes us say things like always and forever. It drives people like Willie and Hag and Proust to distraction. And all we can say is “just look at us now.” Look at what love’s done to us. “Why Do I Have to Choose” is the only Willie-penned song on the album. Willie wants to have it both ways, to have the road and his home, too. Why should he have to choose between the two conflicting desires? Why can’t he have both? “The love is not the same, but either love is true.” Willie wants to be true to everyone. Merle’s “Silver Wings” tries to end the album on an upbeat note (figuratively and literally). “Don’t leave me, I cry. Don’t take that airplane ride.” It’s a “she’s gone” song, but an upbeat one. Ironically, he sang earlier “If I Could Only Fly,” and here he laments that his woman can fly on silver wings, but she’s flying in the wrong direction. So flight can cut both ways. Overall this is a terribly melancholy and sad album, but it’s tender, soothing. It’s hard to know exactly how to take it. “You locked me out of your mind.” Willie doesn’t like people to lock him out of their mind because he keeps his mind open, and people are always on his mind. Like Proust he remains always open to impressions from the past that might yield new sensations.