Who’ll Buy My Memories: The IRS Tapes (1991)—take 2

I listened to this album again in the car driving back from Maine on July 10th, and I have to say it was better than I remembered it, and I remembered it well. It struck me this time that when Willie was at his lowest, when his possessions were being sold out from under him, where did he turn? Not to some future scheme. He turned to the past. The past is his go-to resource when times get tough. He finds comfort and security in the past. Paradoxically, he is able to keep moving forward so smoothly by ceaselessly returning to the past. It’s so counter-intuitive, so Gatsby-like. One step back and two steps forward. I just re-read my lengthy January blog on this album, and I stand by my statement that this may be his best album. I commented on almost every song in January, but I’ll bring to bear this time the larger context of six months of listening and almost 100 albums as well as two more volumes of Proust.

In the haunting title track, Willie sings, “I’d like to start my life anew, but memories make me blue” and “When I remember how things were, my memories all lead to her.” Another “she’s gone” song and another connection between time and love. We remember best what we love most, and we love most what we remember best. I’ve never been a big fan of “Jimmy’s Road,” but this time I notice the line “Jimmy went to war, and something changed his mind around.” The biggest changes seem to happen on the inside, in the mind. “It Should Be Easier Now,” but again and again we see that time doesn’t heal, it reopens the wounds. “I made up my mind that you’re gone,” but it turns out we can’t really control our own minds, and we may not be able to control our own wills, according to Daniel Wegner in his book “The Illusion of the Conscious Will.” “They say everything happens for the best.” Who says this? Dr. Pangloss? Leibniz? Candide? Alexander Pope? Willie Nelson himself preaches this a fair amount in his other songs (see “Healing Hands of Time”). Time should heal, but “the wounds in my heart you’ve carved deep and wide,” maybe two wide for time to suture. Wounds “hollowed and washed by the tears that I’ve cried.” A stitch in time may not be able to save the memories in our mind. In “Will You Remember Me” Willie ponders “the test of time” and “the sands of time.” This is another “she’s gone” song. “Gone are the times.” Time is a woman. Time is love. And both are gone. Yesterday I heard on the radio a new song called “What Kinda Gone” by Chris Cagle.

I hollered, baby, is there somethin' wrong?

Thought I heard her say somethin' soundin' like I'm gone

But these days gone can mean so many things

There's gone for good and there's good and gone

And there's gone with the long before it

I wish she'd been just a little more clear

Well there's gone for the day and gone for the night

And gone for the rest of your doggone life

Is it whiskey night or just a couple beers?

I mean what kind of gone are we talkin' 'bout here?

Well it's gettin' dark out she ain't back yet

Ain't called home turned off the phone

Ah man ha this might not be good

I would have stopped her when she went to leave

But i didn't 'cause i didn't really think what i'm thinkin' now

I'm still not sure what gone is all about

Is it the kind of gone where she's at her mom's coolin' down?

She'll come around or the kind that says you had your chance

And she ain't comin' back

What kind of gone indeed. There are so many ways to be gone, to be lost, and only one way to be home. There’s the rub. G.K. Chesterton wrote often about this. C.S. Lewis, too. So many ways to leave. “Fifty Ways to Leave Your Lover.” Maybe the variety is what seduces us. Only one way to stay home. “I Still Can’t Believe You’re Gone” is a “she’s not really gone” song, and it focuses on our belief about time, our faith in time, our trust in time. How we feel about time, what we believe about time matters, so much so, that we think we can fight it with our minds, control it, manipulate it. “Yesterday’s Wine” is a drink at the bar with time. Time is wine. Time itself gets better with time. It has vintages. “It’s Not Supposed to Be That Way” and “It Should Be Easier Now.” We think we know how the story’s supposed to go. Love and time, however, refuse to conform to our suppositions. We hope and pray that things will be different. That “you will not forget you Country Boy,” but people do forget, or they can’t forget. It’s not supposed to be that way, but so often it is. In “The Sound in Your Mind” Willie feels bad when time heals his wounds. Forgetting hurts more than remembering. Time does heal his wounds, but somehow the healing hurts more than the wound. Healing hurts more than hurting. It’s another “she’s gone” song (they all are, it seems). “Permanently Lonely” fits the bill as well. It’s a “She’s gone but I don’t care” song. Like “I’m Alright” by Jo Dee Messina. “So Much to Do” could also be titled “She’s Gone.” Every song seems to be about different ways to be gone, and different ways to deal with people leaving you. And as I’ve said before, she = time, and time leaves us like a lover. Leaves us in the dust, literally. It has more than fifty ways to leave us mortals. We are Lonely Little Mansions looking for someone to live inside of us for this brief span of life. Renters, really, are what we are looking for, even sub-letters. Home is what we leave, the place where the road starts. It defines the road. The road is everything that is not home. Everything we desire outside of what we have because we can’t desire what we already have, so we can’t desire home. Wanting = lacking, so we can’t lack what we have. The lacking is the vacuum that creates the desire. How do we maintain the pull of the vacuum when there is no emptiness? When the house is full? “Summer of Roses/December Day” fits the seasons category of song. These are mostly about autumn. Seasons help “soften the snowflakes,” help us face the winter snows, the hard times. Seasons resolve the paradox by having change within order. Variety within pattern. Innovation and individuality within form and formula. How can we do the same with home. How can we have the road within the home, or home within in the road. How can still truly be still moving? Like rivers, always changing and always the same at the same time. Finite and infinite at the same time. I can’t believe I’ve never noticed these lines before: “Love’s summer college where the green leaves of knowledge are waiting to fall with the fall.” Love’s summer college indeed. We learn about love from the leaves. They are green, but they know they will be brown soon, and they will fall. So what comes of all our knowledge about love? What’s the point? Do we forget it each time and have to learn it anew each season, with each new season of love? Proust seems to suggest so. We never learn, as the seasons never learn. They can’t anticipate fall. It won’t help. What can they do? “Pretend I Never Happened” suggests one answer. We can pretend we’ll never fall, pretend we never fell. Pretend love will last forever. Is that what art does—pretend! Erase our prior knowledge of love so we can start anew, with youthful idealism. Ignorance is bliss. Just forget about it. Except, of course, that we can’t. “Slow Down Old World” because “I live too fast” and I’m “too blue to cry anymore.” But how can you live slowly on the road? It’s another “still is still moving” song. “My life ain’t mine anymore.” Then whose is it? The woman who left you? Did she take it with her? Hurry slowly. The Taoist way. He’s too blue to take this opportunity to cry. Maybe you don’t need to “exchange the words I love you for goodbye.” Maybe they are the same thing. Maybe “I love you” is just the beginning, the prelude, to goodbye. So despite our summer college knowledge, despite the lessons of the leaves of fall, our “lesson in leaving,” Willie falls in love again (and again and again) in “I’m Falling in Love Again.” “If You Could Only See” what’s goin’ through my mind, you would know you were “Always on my mind.” But since you can’t, you’ll have to take my word for it, my art. Willie’s life has been spent trying to show us what’s going through his mind. Only with his art can he even begin to show us. “If you could see our love directing time.” So love directs time. It is time, but it directs it, too. Like a trinity, time and love and mind, father, son, and only ghost. Three persons, but one entity. “If you only knew the values of the unknowns.” Love = God = unknown. We love what we don’t know. And we love most what we know least, and since God = love, and we know him least, we love him most. He sees the “transitions going on,” but we can’t. “I’d rather You Didn’t Love Me” fits with “It’s Not Supposed to Be That Way,” “It Should Be Easier Now,” and “Pretend I Never Happened.” These songs are all about us wishing things were other than they are. “I’d Rather You Didn’t Love Me,” but you do. Things are rarely the way I’d rather them to be. “How can I name the one to blame?” Who’s fault is it? “I suppose it’s the way you believe.” If you don’t love me, then you can’t leave me. That’s one solution. Take your ball and go home. You’d think that would make your heart safe, but “What Can You Do To Me Now” proves that wrong. We are always susceptible to falling in love again. We can always love again; we can always hurt some more. In Buddy, Willie asks, “Don’t let her get the best of me” and don’t let me “start feeling lonely.” “Let’s talk about things as they were, Buddy, before I got mixed up with her.” Yet another “She’s gone” song. Another “how do I deal with her being gone” song. Here he asks a friend to help him cope, to help keep the memories at bay, to help him slay the memories if needed, handcuff them, tame them. In “Remember the Good Times” Willie suggests another way to cope. “Don’t waste a moment unhappy.” Really? From the crying cowboy who feels bad when he feels better? Shouldn’t the advice be just the opposite? Remember the bad times, they yield better songs. No pain, no platinum (records, that is). Forget the good times, no one wants to hear you sing about them. Ironically, listening to sad songs makes you feel better. Listening to happy songs makes you feel envious and bitter. “Wake Me When It’s Over” suggests yet another method for facing time and love. Sleep it off. The truth is, the blues will never get up and leave your bed. They have set up permanent residence at the “Home Motel” on lost love avenue. “Who’ll Buy My Memories” could also be titled “Who’ll Buy My Lost Love.” Who’ll buy what I’ve lost? Willie is essentially selling everything he’s lost. Ironically, he is selling what he doesn’t have. And making a killing at it.