Blaze Foley

The wind keeps blowing somewhere everyday
Tell me things get better, somewhere up the way
Just dismal thinking on a dismal day
Sad songs for us to bear

You know sometimes I write happy songs
But then sometimes little things go wrong

“There is an uncompromising honesty… There’s just a quality in the way he interacted with people as well as his music; he looked into the very center of your soul and could tell if you were full of shit or not… There’s a gritty soul to his songs and the way he performed them. To be honest, Blaze wasn’t always pretty. In a lot of ways he was an outcast.”

Blaze Foley is back in my life - and for as surprisingly it can be - not in a disruptive way. For a songwriting legend, drawn to a tragic life and a tragic ending, full of bad luck, self-destructive and booze combinations, he is able to fulfil your life with a loving depiction of a feeling you may - or not - be able to describe. Words have this tendency to be harsh and hard, and if you keep going on and on you will find yourself lost in thought, and for that reason a few songs might complete you.

I’ve become older, but sometimes the stakes are beyond reasonable, and you will eventually lose it. So did Blaze, gambling it all in his life and music. And although I’m very far away from that - as I’m not an artist - I am also tired of running around looking for answers to questions that I already know. And yes, I have also built a castle of memories (even before listening to Blaze’s songs) just to have somewhere to go.

I’m tired of runnin’ ‘round lookin’
For answers to questions that I already know
I could build me a castle of memories
Just to have somewhere to go

If you take a look at Clay Pigeons, you will realize it is a song about personal redemption, emotional housekeeping and starting over again. I’ve hit a rough patch after the accident as my life got completely stuck. And the best advice I’ve found myself listening to is to surrender to it. If you choose to do that you’ll realize the humanity you got to experience every once in a while. Let time go by itself. Get back to the basics, short term goals to process the hurt. Begin again, let you be blind by the road you laid - that’s The Veils. Find comfort in it, feed some clay to pigeons, break it into bits and discard it afterwords. Hopeful and ready to fly away from trouble. Surrendering to one’s own nature, I guess.

And yes, fate will conspire against you at the most inappropriate of times. And then comes a time when nagging doubts begin to nibble at this optimism. In fact, life has little meaning to the course of the universe, as any other thing that exists, so it is deeply absurd to question meaning. And absurd heroes take no refuge in the illusions of art or religion, neither despair in the face of absurdity - you just don’t pack it all in. But, instead, you can embrace it. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself searching for meaning in an incomprehensible universe, devoid of God, art or friends (and so on). It will arise out the tension between the desire for order and happiness, but will always leave you indifferent to the natural universe’s refusal to provide that.

And if you can embrace this absurd of human existence and take on the purpose of creating value and meaning, you will be just fine. Efforts and resilience, not despair. Deliberately accepting choice and rise above fate, accepting the pointlessness of a task, will help you for the whole span of your life. And the cycle is there, build theories up, create expectations and let them crash back down. Then, compulsively, start again. Each climb is a triumph.

And have in mind Blaze Foley’s music is to be remembered, but not memorized.

Clay Pigeons

I’m goin’ down to the Greyhound station
Gonna get a ticket to ride
Gonna find that lady with two or three kids
And sit down by her side

Ride ’til the sun comes up and down around me
‘Bout two or three times
Smokin’ cigarettes in the last seat
Tryin’ to hide my sorrow from the people I meet
And get along with it all

Go down where the people say “Y’all”
Sing a song with a friend
Change the shape that I’m in
And get back in the game, start playin’ again

I’d like to stay
But I might have to go to start over again
Might go back down to Texas
Might go to somewhere that I’ve never been

And get up in the mornin’ and go out at night
And I won’t have to go home
Get used to bein’ alone
Change the words to this song, start singin’ again

I’m tired of runnin’ ‘round lookin’
For answers to questions that I already know
I could build me a castle of memories
Just to have somewhere to go

Count the days and the nights that it takes
To get back in the saddle again
Feed the pigeons some clay, turn the night into day
Start talkin’ again, when I know what to say

I’m goin’ down to the Greyhound station
Gonna get a ticket to ride
Gonna find that lady with two or three kids
And sit down by her side

Ride ’til the sun comes up and down around me
‘Bout two or three times
Feed the pigeons some clay
Turn the night into day
Start talkin’ again when I know what to say