Your songs to ponder by (w/lyrics if you wish)

I thought of this topic after seeing That's the Way I've Always Heard It Should Be by Carly Simon on YouTube. You're So Vain is her most famous song, but this one is probably her best. Yeah, it was clearly of its time (1970-71) regarding the changing world of women, a world where they often went to college but still became housewives. And it also reflects Carly's upper-class upbringing a bit. But it has timeless themes about our priorities and how life can become stale, and how individual dreams and wants match with sharing your world; does sharing necessarily take a big bite out of you?

Sometimes before I go to sleep, I just hope I haven't been the father in the dark (well, I don't smoke, anyway), or haven't led to magazine reading. And I wonder to what extent I am (or should want to be) "just me first."

 

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Is a dream a lie if it don't come true, or is it something worse?

 

Probably my favorite Springsteen line of them all.

 

That one ranks up there, but perhaps his most haunting or emotional group of lines is:

Now all her pretty dreams been torn
she stares off alone into the night
with the eyes of one who hates for just being born

 

"Behind Blue Eyes."

Though I have brown eyes.

 

And a rock feels no pain.
And an island never cries.

 

"Hello in There," by John Prine. Getting old does not sound like much fun.

"Fountain of Sorrow" and "Late for the Sky" by Jackson Browne.

And for the last five years at my old shop, I felt like the lady in James Taylor's "Millworker."

It be me and my machine
For the rest of the morning
And the rest of the afternoon
Gone for the rest of my life

 

Riptide referred to one of mine, "I Am A Rock." Another one is "Brokedown Palace," and this:

"I've seen better days, and the bottom drops out."

 

Same group, different song.

"The Boxer."

I am leaving, I am leaving/But the fighter still remains.

 

While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer's pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death's honesty
Won't fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes
Must get lonely.

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards
False gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough
What else can you show me ?

And if my thought-dreams could been seen
They'd probably put my head in a guillotine
But it's alright, Ma, it's life, and life only.

 

Holy shit, Dick.
Twice in one week.