When I think back, it’s no wonder I’d become a songwriter. I saw everything as being connected. Movies, dreams, imagination . . . It was all one thing. It was all one circus tent. It took me a long time to find out it wasn’t that way with other people. They went to the circus—once. For an hour. How do you do that and leave it behind? Once you get to the circus you don’t leave.
–John Prine, from Tom Piazza’s Living in the Present with John Prine
“I’m sorry my son, but you’re too late for askin’. Mr Peabody’s coal train has hauled it away.” That pretty much explains life in the US.
I saw John at a free concert in 1971 or 1972 at the UNM student union building. No chairs, we sat on the floor. Followed him ever since that first time. We have been to Nashville 4 time to the Hello In There found raisers. Got to experience Piazza interviewed by Frinoa (wife) about his time with John. Miss him!
Prine’s “The Great Compromise” always fits, never more than right about this second in historical time. Glossary: “She” is our government, “drive-in” is foreign policy, and the current “popcorn” is Venezuela. Or is that the “foreign sports car”? As with all things good, Prine is eternally open to personalized interpretation.
“Well, we’d go out on Saturday evenings
To the drive-in on Route 41
And it was there that I first suspected
That she was doin’ what she’d already done.
She said, “Johnny won’t you get me some popcorn?”
And she knew I had to walk pretty far
And as soon as I passed through the moonlight
She hopped into a foreign sports car
I used to sleep at the foot of Old Glory
And awake in the dawn’s early light
But much to my surprise
When I opened my eyes
I was a victim of the great compromise.”
Every day, I go to earn my bread
In the exchange where lies are marketed,
Hoping my own lies will attract a bid.
“Hollywood Elegies” by Bertolt Brecht (1942)