I learned about John Prine the day Joe Diffie died and commented on both here on TY's recent Simple Man post.
I wasn't really a fan of Diffie or Prine, yet both managed to touch my life in ways that made me grateful for theirs. One of Joe's songs become part of my repertoire when someone I knew shared it with me as a matter of fun. This Christmas, I bought that person a used copy of "The History of John Deere" that I saw in the thrift shop window next to the studio, and he (as the owner of something covered in JD Green) had a good time going through it.
That for me is how life works, one unexpected spark of something that was not previously part of my experience or awareness lights up the next connection.
So too with John Prine. I didn't know of him, his life, music or gift with story, until someone who used to comment here, made mention on another blog of Prine's hospitalization and provided a link to his song, "Sam Stone", written by Prine after he was drafted into the Army during the conflict in the late '60s and inspired by his fellow soldiers to write the song. My respect for that commenter prompted me to click on the link, listen, read the lyrics, and take in a story set to music that held and conveyed sadness and loss, and acknowledged the experience of the many who brought something back from that war that was hard for them to shake. The numerous comments at the link attest to the impact it and he had.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLVWEYUqGew
From Rolling Stone: As he served in the Vietnam War and joined the post office as a mailman, Prine kept writing songs about his life: “Hello in There,” about the loneliness of an old empty-nest couple, the kind he encountered on his mail route, and “Sam Stone,” about a drug-addicted veteran who never really came home from the war, were just two examples. Prine wrote for working people, sad people, old people, and lost people. His style, inspired by John Steinbeck, was deceptively simple. Many emulated it, but only he could do it.
Prine, modest about his talent, didn’t give a lot of interviews. But his interview with Paul Zollo for Bluerailroad is a master class in songwriting. “I think the more the listener can contribute to the song, the better; the more they become part of the song, and they fill in the blanks,” Prine told Zollo. “Rather than tell them everything, you save your details for things that exist. Like what color the ashtray is. How far away the doorway was. So when you’re talking about intangible things, like emotions, the listener can fill in the blanks and you just draw the foundation. I still tend to believe that’s the way to tackle it today.”
I was interested in how young he was when he started writing. And how work done early on, became significant later down the road. Also that he was a poor student, yet ended up making a notable contribution.
In a society focused on compliance, group-think, one size fits all education and testing, in which working a postal route wouldn't be considered much (if not for the pay) he found his way through, with the help/advice of his brothers (not the educational system).
Though he was a poor student, Prine was a natural songwriter; two songs he wrote when he was 14, “Sour Grapes” and “The Frying Pan,” ended up on his LP Diamonds in the Rough, more than 10 years later. Prine had a restless imagination — “I would go to class and just stare at something like a button on the teacher’s shirt,” he said — but he excelled at hobbies he focused on, like gymnastics, which he was inspired to take up by his older brother, Doug. “Here was something I had no natural ability in, and I could do it well,” Prine said.
After graduating high school in 1964, Prine took the advice of his oldest brother, Dave, and became a mailman. Wandering around the Chicago suburbs, Prine wrote many of his classic early songs.
And yes, ND, your comment made me smile and started me down the path of wondering if the time he spent alone in a postal truck may have given his restless imagination the room it needed to roam? To the point of allowing bursts of creativity to go positively postal, rather than narrowing in on a destructive release!
I'm still thinking about Schubert at 22 writing something that continues to bring beauty and lightness to my life two hundred years later. And Klee painting a portrait a hundred years ago that I focused on and enjoyed (and didn't even see as a portrait) during my teen years, with that same picture inviting a smile, raised eyebrow and different awareness in me when it showed up again last week.
With the fear, foolishness, and the soul-crushing negativity swirling around these days, it's easy for me to lose sight of the fact that who we are and what we do can enhance lives and make a positive difference (often without our awareness) during and long after our time of wandering around in the mail truck is done.
Take TY's posts, for example. His truck never fails to go somewhere out of the ordinary and deliver a package of something unusual, moving through neighborhoods I'd prefer not to visit. With me stomping on the imaginary brake and saying "What the heck are you doing?? as the truck continues to roll on in sickness, and hopefully in health too!
5 comments:
Only drank vodka and ginger ale. Lots of it.
Not really a fan.
I learned about John Prine the day Joe Diffie died and commented on both here on TY's recent Simple Man post.
I wasn't really a fan of Diffie or Prine, yet both managed to touch my life in ways that made me grateful for theirs. One of Joe's songs become part of my repertoire when someone I knew shared it with me as a matter of fun. This Christmas, I bought that person a used copy of "The History of John Deere" that I saw in the thrift shop window next to the studio, and he (as the owner of something covered in JD Green) had a good time going through it.
That for me is how life works, one unexpected spark of something that was not previously part of my experience or awareness lights up the next connection.
So too with John Prine. I didn't know of him, his life, music or gift with story, until someone who used to comment here, made mention on another blog of Prine's hospitalization and provided a link to his song, "Sam Stone", written by Prine after he was drafted into the Army during the conflict in the late '60s and inspired by his fellow soldiers to write the song. My respect for that commenter prompted me to click on the link, listen, read the lyrics, and take in a story set to music that held and conveyed sadness and loss, and acknowledged the experience of the many who brought something back from that war that was hard for them to shake. The numerous comments at the link attest to the impact it and he had.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OLVWEYUqGew
From Rolling Stone: As he served in the Vietnam War and joined the post office as a mailman, Prine kept writing songs about his life: “Hello in There,” about the loneliness of an old empty-nest couple, the kind he encountered on his mail route, and “Sam Stone,” about a drug-addicted veteran who never really came home from the war, were just two examples. Prine wrote for working people, sad people, old people, and lost people. His style, inspired by John Steinbeck, was deceptively simple. Many emulated it, but only he could do it.
Prine, modest about his talent, didn’t give a lot of interviews. But his interview with Paul Zollo for Bluerailroad is a master class in songwriting. “I think the more the listener can contribute to the song, the better; the more they become part of the song, and they fill in the blanks,” Prine told Zollo. “Rather than tell them everything, you save your details for things that exist. Like what color the ashtray is. How far away the doorway was. So when you’re talking about intangible things, like emotions, the listener can fill in the blanks and you just draw the foundation. I still tend to believe that’s the way to tackle it today.”
John Prine, a mailman who went the opposite of postal.
I was interested in how young he was when he started writing. And how work done early on, became significant later down the road. Also that he was a poor student, yet ended up making a notable contribution.
In a society focused on compliance, group-think, one size fits all education and testing, in which working a postal route wouldn't be considered much (if not for the pay) he found his way through, with the help/advice of his brothers (not the educational system).
Though he was a poor student, Prine was a natural songwriter; two songs he wrote when he was 14, “Sour Grapes” and “The Frying Pan,” ended up on his LP Diamonds in the Rough, more than 10 years later. Prine had a restless imagination — “I would go to class and just stare at something like a button on the teacher’s shirt,” he said — but he excelled at hobbies he focused on, like gymnastics, which he was inspired to take up by his older brother, Doug. “Here was something I had no natural ability in, and I could do it well,” Prine said.
After graduating high school in 1964, Prine took the advice of his oldest brother, Dave, and became a mailman. Wandering around the Chicago suburbs, Prine wrote many of his classic early songs.
And yes, ND, your comment made me smile and started me down the path of wondering if the time he spent alone in a postal truck may have given his restless imagination the room it needed to roam? To the point of allowing bursts of creativity to go positively postal, rather than narrowing in on a destructive release!
I'm still thinking about Schubert at 22 writing something that continues to bring beauty and lightness to my life two hundred years later. And Klee painting a portrait a hundred years ago that I focused on and enjoyed (and didn't even see as a portrait) during my teen years, with that same picture inviting a smile, raised eyebrow and different awareness in me when it showed up again last week.
With the fear, foolishness, and the soul-crushing negativity swirling around these days, it's easy for me to lose sight of the fact that who we are and what we do can enhance lives and make a positive difference (often without our awareness) during and long after our time of wandering around in the mail truck is done.
Take TY's posts, for example. His truck never fails to go somewhere out of the ordinary and deliver a package of something unusual, moving through neighborhoods I'd prefer not to visit. With me stomping on the imaginary brake and saying "What the heck are you doing?? as the truck continues to roll on in sickness, and hopefully in health too!
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