The Biblio File June 2019 Essay: “One of These Days”
ONE OF THESE DAYS
I could hardly stand it, I was so excited about seeing Emmylou Harris at The Gorge Amphitheater. Not only would I see the woman whose music I’ve adored since I was in my twenties, the concert would, I figured, feed the song in progress in my head, a song that would honor Emmylou and my other musical heartthrob, Jesse Winchester. The few lines I’d written pulsed inside me like the first lines of a novel, followed me around relentlessly. Drunk on wine. My feet were dirty. Been awhile since I’d seen thirty…
I was armed against the notorious Gorge heat with a thin white t shirt, a straw hat, and a cloth to soak with water and wrap around my neck. I’d heard the traffic was bad, but I wasn’t prepared to travel only 6 miles in an hour and a half. When we finally arrived at the Gorge, I was relieved to manage my cumbersome gear while trekking a considerable distance to “The Lawn”, where I would, I figured, enter and remain in a transcendent state, as Emmylou worked her soulful magic.
I settled among the throngs of people, thousands, I found out later. I saw the stage, at least two hundred feet away, so tiny I could barely see blurry dots. On the gigantic screens on either side of the stage, I saw the tiny dots magnified into Neko Case, the opening act. Her voice was loud and metallic in the hot, humid air. Surely, I thought, Emmylou will be more visible and audible than this.
Ed says that, when the Emmylou dot appeared on stage, and I heard the dull, awful sound produced from that sterile, impersonal platform, he saw excitement drain from me. “I could see you sink,” he said. “And you kept trying to make it better, you’d sit up and clap and sing along to the few words you could understand, and then you’d sink again, and I knew there was no way to make this thing all right.”
To make things worse, Emmylou wasn’t the main act, (Brandi Carlisle was), so, during Emmylou’s performance, the young whippersnappers around me, who obviously did not know they were in the presence of royalty, were gabbing and giggling and getting in the way. What a bust. How would I write a song about my transcendent Gorge experience, when the only thing it transcended was any notion I had of how disappointing a concert could possibly be?
I was not great company as Ed and I drove home the next morning. And that afternoon, the song-writing instruction book I’d ordered to guide me while I wrote my Emmylou and Jesse masterpiece, wouldn’t load correctly into my Kindle and was a non-readable mess. So much for new creative adventures. Who did I think I was? Never mind that my favorite kitty (RIP) was named Emmylou Harris Morrison. Never the hell mind that I use her name for my email address.
I do not, however, wear a navy t shirt with “Nevertheless, She Persisted” in bold white letters on the front, for nothing. I called a songwriter friend, who came over and helped me with some basics. When she asked me what particular images Emmylou’s songs gave me, I thought of a rumpled bed in a Las Vegas Hotel and a fierce, bible toting woman striding through a valley, singing “One of these days…”. I remembered a slave who sure could sing in the fields.
And I remembered the one thing Emmylou said at the Gorge concert that I could both hear and understand. “When things were so bad for so long, what I didn’t know was that they could get much worse,” she said. “But then, I found out that if you just live each day the best you can, well, things get better. They do.” That was one of the things I most loved about Emmylou. She wasn’t afraid to sing about the dregs of misery, and she celebrated joy. Her music kept me going when I didn’t think I could.
I’m back to writing my song. I write a little each day, the best I can. It’s titled “Emmylou and Jesse Drove Me Home”. It’s getting better. It is.
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