Waylon and Willie (1978)—take 2

Proust might have written “Mama’s don’t let your babies grow up to be writers.” Artists are notoriously unstable and reckless. Dangerous additions to the family. Again, I covered this album pretty thoroughly in my January blog, but this time around I notice the presence of time even more. “Time slips away till you die.” Waylon sings of “the future of the homesick and the brave.” And in “Pick Up the Tempo”: “Some people are saying that time will take care of people like me.” As I am reading the final volume of Proust’s six-volume “In Search of Lost Time,” I am seeing more and more connections to Willie’s lyrics. Willie is living too fast and he can’t last much longer. Proust lives too slowly, yet he, too, wastes away. We can die from living too fast or too slow. Why is it we don’t want to live in normal time, in 4-4 meter, in the present? Why must we swing life, living ahead of or behind the beat? Why do we always have to “pick up the tempo”? Proust could have written “If You Can Touch Her at All” about Albertine. “She can be worth the world if you can touch her at all.” But Albertine, like Daisy, remains untouchable, elusive. Waylon’’s “Lookin’ for a Feelin’” is written in a similar vein. “I’m lookin’ for a feelin’ that I once had with you…that I lost when I lost you.” Proust’s novel could have been titled “Lookin’ for a Feelin.’” The lovers “never seem to do.” That Platonic ideal of love always eludes Willie and Proust. “It’s Not Supposed to Be That Way” is the only Willie standard on this album. This may be the slowest, lonesomest song on the album. Mickey’s harmonica accentuates its melancholy edge. Willie slows the whole album down right before he picks up the tempo with “I Can Get Off on You.” I just noticed Willie’s humming at the end of “It’s Not Supposed to Be That Way.” He doesn’t do that on any other song I can think of. I guess “I Can Get Off On You” is the flip side of “It’s Not Supposed to Be That Way.” It could be titled “I’m Supposed To Be Able to Get Off on You.” Still one of my favorite up-tempo Willie songs. Right up there with “Sioux City Sue.” Stevie Nicks’ “Gold Dust Woman” could also have been penned by Proust about Albertine:

Well, did she make you cry, make you break down,

Shatter your illusions of love

And is it over now, do you know how

Pick up the pieces and go home

Willie picks up the pieces and goes to Venice after Albertine leaves him. Then he goes home to Paris in volume six. Proust’s novel could be called “Illusions of love.” Maybe time, like love, is an illusion. Maybe we are disillusioned equally by both. Albertine and Gilbertte and all of Proust’s lovers are gold dust women. Too good to be true. Daisy’s voice is full of money. And Proust’s dreams, his prose, are truer than reality. Willie delves further into the recesses of time with Shel Silverstein’s “A Couple More Years.” Willie’s not wiser from age alone but because he’s spent “more time with [his] back to the wall.” So he has suffered into knowledge, truth. Willie picks up years like pieces, like lovers, like memories. Time is a woman. A woman we are always trying to “hook up” with. Picking up the pieces of the past while “in search of lost time.” Where do you find pieces of lost time? Where do you look? In your mind? Willie and Proust win “The Wurlitzer Prize” for not wanting to get over anyone. “I Don’t Want to Get Over You” could be the title of Proust’s novel and all of Willie’s songs. Even if Willie says he is over her, or wants to get over her, don’t believe him. He lies. He likes not getting over people. He hits the road and seems to easily get over people, but he doesn’t. He never outruns his memories. They catch up with him even on the road. They are his muse. What would he sing about and what would Proust write about if they got over these past lovers? Getting over lovers would be tantamount to getting over art itself. Art is a way of not having to get over anything. The lovers on Keats’ Grecian Urn never get over each other. They never have to because they are frozen in art. Art allows us not to have to get over people.