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Thursday, January 29, 2009
QUICKIE
George Clinton
You Shouldn't-Nuf Bit Fish
Capitol : 1983
[Buy It]
PASSIN' THRU
Frederick Knight
1974
Available on : The Complete Stax-Volt Soul Singles, Vol. 3: 1972-1975
Stax : 1994
[Buy It]
LIFE IS...TOO SHORT
Too Short
Life Is...Too Short
Jive : 1988
[Buy It]
RAPIDS
T-Rex
Tanx
Reprise : 1973
[Buy It]
Busy week, at work, at home, busy for reasons that made sense to me at the time, that faintly make sense now, that will cease to make sense soon. But soon's coming too soon: too much to do. And yet, committed. Always committed. (Should be committed?) Will endeavor to provide the maximum Moistworks satisfaction, even if it's just a short visit, a quickie, even if I'm just passing through.
Recently I was talking to a friend of mine who lives in a state that starts with a M. I cannot describe her more specifically than that, for reasons you are about to read. Her husband has become a source of great disappointment to her. As he gets older, he has lost his patience, nearly all of it. They went to a children's party the other week. They came early, because he was hot to get out of the house. They didn't stay very long, because he was hot to leave. On the way out, he found that the family's coats were buried under a heap of coats left by later arrivals. "He blew his top," she said, by which she meant that he stomped his foot once and went to wait outside. "I tried to talk to him about it at dinner but couldn't," she said. "I wanted to agree with him, that the hosts were incredibly stupid to arrange the coats the way they did, but he got up in the middle of the meal. My middle. He was done early. He was quick as always. Plus, he's always tired. He has energy only for moving through things, not for staying with things." She went on to say something about going to bed with him, and how brevity was a problem there, too. Or maybe it was that it wasn't a problem, because she was tired also. I didn't listen to her closely, for reasons you are about to read.
As it turns out, her story had gone on too long for me. I like her, but I sympathize with her husband. Life gets shorter as it gets longer, and it's progressively harder to find reasons to burrow into a pile of coats or to pile on inconsiderate hosts or to consider foreplay, say, in light of the rewarding horizon. Young men can be impatient, but it's from ardor or inexperience. They want to get to the next good thing. Old men are impatient from a whole host of other reasons, not the least of which is getting away from the last bad thing. Much of the time, this isn't morally defensible. Bernardino of Siena, who was old six hundred years before I'll be, wrote about the wickednesses that can get into elderly men: the gloominess, the lickerishness, the willful ignorance, the impatience. Why is impatience last on that list? Why not first? Who can wait?
So, quickly, some older songs about quickness, starting with "Quickie," which is from an album whose title deals directly with impatience -- really, fish, you shouldn't-nuf-bit -- and rushing through the stately secular gospel "Passing Thru" and the plainly philosophical "Life Is...Too Short" (against the lyrics--"Don't be stupid, though / Cause when you waste it, you'll know"--the central sample, from Average White Band's "School Boy Crush," sounds like an explicit irony) before arriving, breathlessly, at "Rapids." It's the first T-Rex song I heard, in the car of an older kid who used to drive me home from school. He drove too fast. He used to yell at older drivers. He couldn't have known that they were every bit as impatient as he was, only more powerfully. The song is still one of my favorites, even though it's from that album that everyone considers a falling-off from The Slider. What's it called, again? Tanx? You're welcome.Labels: ben, rock
posted by Ben
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