EASTBOUND AND DOWN
Jerry Reed
1977
Available on : The Essential Jerry Reed
RCA : 1995
[Buy It]

BUSY DOIN' NOTHIN'
The Beach Boys
Friends
Capitol : 1968
[Buy It]

TOO BUSY
Louis Armstrong
1928
Available on : The Complete Hot Five and Hot Seven Recordings
Sony : 2000
[Buy It]

WORK SONG
Dan Reeder
Dan Reeder
Oh Boy : 2004
[Buy It]

I had a busy week back from vacation. Lots to do and not very much time, and so the days felt pinched, kind of like they did for the Bandit:

We've got a long way to go and a short time to get there

He wasn't kidding. In only twenty-eight hours, the Bandit and his Trans Am had to block for Snowman as they ran 400 cases of Coors from Texas to Georgia. They had to make the Southern Classic or else they'd never get their eighty thou from Big Enos:

Keep your foot hard on the pedal, son, never mind them brakes
Let it all hang out cause we've got a run to make
The boys are thirsty in Atlanta, and there's beer in Texarkana
We'll bring it back no matter what it takes

My situation is nearly the same as the Bandit's, with some instructive differences. Instead of ducking and dodging Buford T. Justice and picking up runaway brides on the roadside, I sit in an office, generally either writing or editing, sometimes meeting to talk about writing or editing. In any given day, there are many things to do, but the size of those things is subjective. They have no set physical dimensions and consequently few set chronological dimensions. At my discretion, within reason, the time spent on those things can contract and so, in a sense, the time-container can be felt to have expanded. This was not dreamt of in the Bandit's philosophy.

Yesterday I was talking to a friend of mine and...well, that should tell you something about how busy I was. I was pressed for time. I was strapped. I was running in circles. Still, I had time for her in the sense that I had the desire to talk to her, and consequently the will to contract the tasks at hand. You can always count on my making time for friends, because friends are what make time count. I think that was stitched on a sampler I saw once. (One of the other ones was "Peace in your heart can be seen on your face and in your soul." I never quite got that.)

As coincidence would have it, the conversation we had was about how another friend of hers is always too busy to talk. The two women have been friends for years. Their friendship with one another predates my friendship with either. Despite that, whenever the first friend calls the second friend during the day, the second friend says that she is too busy, and rushes the first friend off the phone. The first friend has complained bitterly to me about the state of affairs. "How can she be too busy? That's crap."

As I have said, to disagree would smack of hypocrisy. The other day, when she called, her purpose was twofold: to reiterate her central complaint about the second friend and then to dispense an epiphany. I think it was a fresh one and that she dialed me as it was crowning. "I don't think it's that she's too busy at all," she said. "If she's really as busy as she says, she would just let the phone go through to voice mail."

"Good point," I said.

"I think she's trying to put me in my place."

"How so?"

"Well, we have a different relationship socially. Whenever we're at a bar, she monopolizes the conversation. She tells me about her bad boyfriends, about how this one was mean and that one drank too much and the other one kept meaning not to drink so much."

"Monopolize, you say?" I said.

"Absolutely. One hundred percent. No, more. One thousand percent. It's not fair. I mean sometimes I have a bad day, like today. My boss is opening a second store and she's been in a terrible mood and she almost took my head off when I asked her where the deodorizer for the bathroom is. I'd like to be able to talk about that. But when this friend and I go out, it's all about her. I like hearing about it, but sometimes I look at my watch and I see that she has chewed up two hours. I don't know where the time goes, and I don't mean that like someone in love."

"Have you said anything to her?"

"Of course not. What could I say? It would hurt her feelings, and she's my friend. So why doesn't she feel the same way?" I started to answer, but then I remembered the terms. She went on. "You know, the reason I feel so bad about it is that once I had a boyfriend who was exactly the same as her." This, delivered like an epiphany, was not one. It had been rehearsed. In fact, I had heard it before. "He was my first serious boyfriend when I came to New York. He was a lawyer in a big firm and I was just getting started in the office of an art supply store. There were no cell phones then, or far fewer, but I had a phone at my desk, and lots of downtime. I used to call him during the day. He rarely answered, and when he did, he was like a different person. It was like someone was pointing a gun at his head on his end of the phone. It made me feel smaller than a flea, like a worthless little speck. But did I break up with him?"

It was my line. "Not soon enough."

"You said it," she said. "Not soon enough." Our conversation went on from there into other topics: her brother's nagging cough, the strange appeal of commercial wallpaper, a book she read, another she meant to read. My phone keeps track of the length of the call, and this one was more than fifteen minutes. I won't say how much more. Eventually she said she had to go. Someone was standing near her desk and she needed to look busy.

I put on my headphones and forgot all about the phone. I had editing to do. While I worked, I listened to music: it's like being busy in two different ways at once, and since I was listening to music about being busy, it was like being busy in three different ways. I went through Elvis Costello's "Busy Bodies," which is, predictably, about a different kind of getting busy, and the Lyres' "Busy Body," which I think is also about sex, or possibly about rock-and-roll. For more than a little while, I stuck close to the Beach Boys' "Busy Doin' Nothin'," which is a little Brian Wilson vignette about the way that the daily grind can interfere with important things, like communication with friends. I will quote a large swath of it, because that's quicker than picking out a few resonant lines:

I get a lot of thoughts in the morning
I write 'em all down
If it wasn't for that
I'd forget 'em in a while

And lately I've been thinking 'bout a good friend
I'd like to see more of, yeah yeah yeah
I think I'll make a call

I wrote a number down
But I lost it
So I searched through my pocket book
I couldn't find it
So I sat and concentrated on the number
And slowly it came to me
So I dialed it

And I let it ring a few times
There was no answer
So I let it ring a little more
Still no answer

So I hung up the telephone
Got some paper and sharpened up a pencil
And wrote a letter to my friend

There is a desperate Zen flavor to this, as there is to many Beach Boys songs of the period, but there's also practical advice. Don't spend all your time on the phone. If you don't get an answer right away, write a letter.

I called my friend to tell her, but she didn't answer. I called back a few minutes later: still nothing. Once, a few months ago, after weeks of her calling me all the time to tell me about her troubles, she dropped off the map. I experienced an even mix of relief and lack. But this was just a phone that wasn't being answered. I returned to the headphones, and soon enough came across Louis Armstrong's "Too Busy," from 1928, which is a fairly straightforward tale of busted love, distinct only as a result of the spirited and altogether strange lead vocal by Lillie Delk Christian. (Armstrong shows up scatting at the end.) The lyrics are short and sharp, like a pocketknife, and they are occupied (maybe even preoccupied) with what happens when one person can't find time for another person. When you're blown off, what's the blowback? Again, to save time (I could explain the reasons but that would defeat the purpose--you can find them up above, by the Beach Boys' song), I'll quote generously:

Why do you keep avoiding me
I confess it's annoying me
Honestly it's so aggravating

Play that twice, the way Christian moves from the rhyming verse of the first two lines to the almost witheringly conversational "Honestly, it's so aggravating." Play it three times, in fact, then move on.

Won't you tell me just what to do
When I ask for a kiss or two
You say no not now dear
Somehow dear
You're always too busy for my loving
Too busy for my petting
That is all that I've been getting from you

What's more and I'm not lying
I noticed you've been trying
Hard to shake me
And it's making me blue
I can't understand your actions
But I'll get my satisfaction
Don't you worry just you wait and see dear
Wait til you want me honey
Then it won't be so funny
When I say that I'm too busy for you

The Armstrong was the flip side to the Beach Boys, not literally--though that would have made a great split single--but temperamentally. Should you let the day run its course and value precious time when you find it, or should you feel acutely the sting of other people's alleged unavailability, sharpen your resentment to a point, and then plunge it into their hearts? I see that my friend has called a few times. I should call her back and see where she falls on the question, but it'll have to wait until later. I tell you, I've got enough to do.