Tag Archives: Blue Recollection

Man in the Bottle

Blue Recollection

I suppose you ought to know you’re in trouble when you realize you consider your daily dive into the soothing depths of the bottle to be somehow heroic.

But the truth is that I was not just a willful and enthusiastic drunk, I didn’t just romanticize drunken nescience — I exulted it as somehow emblematic of man’s struggle with his own weaker nature.

In those days — and for a long time after — I viewed my drinking as a badge of honor, like a wounded survivor proud of his crutch.

So, where you might see the protagonist of this song as, oh, say, for arguments sake, a pathetic loser, when I was writing it, I saw the guy as a tragic hero, battered and wounded, yet rising (through the haze of a thousand hangovers stretched end to end) to face the sysiphean ordeal of daily life…

He could give up.

But, somehow, he reaches deep inside himself to find that last bit of courage, reaches for his medicine, and goes on to face another day.

Blue Recollection

more stream & DL options

previous versions
Saturday, November 05, 2005
Friday, April 07, 2006

lyrics
Blue Recollection

Now the last thing I remember
You were walking out the door
My hand reached for the bottle
then there ain’t no more

you’re just a blue recollection
that ain’t nothin’ new
I been having trouble forgetting
to remember that I don’t still love you

I wake up at nite
but it ain’t because of you
I’m just listening to the plaster crack
and the clock tick in the next guy’s room

you’re just a blue recollection
that ain’t nothin’ new
I been having trouble forgetting
to remember that I don’t still love you

Now the last thing I remember
You were walking out the door
My hand reached for the bottle
then there ain’t no more…

I’m just listening to the plaster crack… [Blue Recollection]

Leave a reply

Blue Recollection

I‘m not the first drunk to suggest that he drank not to forget but to not care. I found that the latter state was typically arrived at just before the former.

I also found that, if you were careful, you could get into that state early in the evening and stay in it until, oh, sometime… sometime when it just didn’t matter, anymore.

I found myself stymied by this song over the last few days. I’d recorded a version of it and started to put it up on the web… but as I listened to it, I realized it simply wasn’t up to the high standards of…

OK, no, seriously, even I couldn’t browbeat myself into putting that version up. The next day, as much because I’d written down the song title in a draft of the day’s AYoS blog entry, I found myself both compelled and unable to finish the song. And move on.

But the song defied me. Hell, it laughed in my face. Late each night I tried again to get an acceptable version. It became, you know, a thing.

I finally turned the song inside out and stripped out the familiar blues elements and repetitions.

I suppose I ought to have a periodic disclaimer that stipulates that I’m painfully aware of how far from pitch my singing typically is. I like to think of it as… uh… expressive.

previous:
Saturday, November 05, 2005

BLUE RECOLLECTION

Now the last thing I remember
You were walking out the door
My hand reached for the bottle
then there ain’t no more

you’re just a blue recollection
that ain’t nothin’ new
I been having trouble forgetting
to remember that I don’t still love you

I wake up at nite
but it ain’t because of you
I’m just listening to the plaster crack
and the clock tick in the next guy’s room

you’re just a blue recollection
that ain’t nothin’ new
I been having trouble forgetting
to remember that I don’t still love you

Now the last thing I remember
You were walking out the door
My hand reached for the bottle
then there ain’t no more…

Blue Recollection

Leave a reply

My hand reached for the bottle...
I wake up at nite
but it ain’t because of you
Oh yeah I wake up at nite
but it sure ain’t because of you
I’m just listening to the plaster crack
and the clock tick in the next guy’s room

Ran that through the Babelfish translator and came up with this:

Despierto en la noche pero no está debido a usted.
Oh, sí. Despierto en la noche, pero no está seguramente debido a usted.
Soy el escuchar justo la grieta del yeso y el impulso del
reloj en el cuarto del individuo siguiente.

Which translated back to this:

Wide-awake at night but it is not due to you.
Oh, yes. Wide-awake at night, but it is not surely due to you.
I am right to listen the crack of plaster and the impulse of the clock
in the quarter of the following individual.

[Okay, okay. I know this smacks of being a cheap shot to not have to write anything. So?]

Tomorrow or the next day I should be posting a song that was the result of grafting these lyrics to another short set of similarly themed lyrics (hey, that’s about 30% of my oeuvre, ya’ know?)… in the name of efficiency, as much as anything. I’m a database guy. We hate unnecessary redundancy…

BLUE RECOLLECTION

Now the last thing I remember
You were walking out the door
Yes the last thing I remember
You were walking out that door
My hand reached for the bottle
then there ain’t no more

you’re just a blue recollection
I swear that ain’t nothin’ new
I been having trouble forgetting
to remember that I don’t love you

I wake up at nite
but it ain’t because of you
Oh yeah I wake up at nite
but it sure ain’t because of you
I’m just listening to the plaster crack
and the clock tick in the next guy’s room

you’re just a blue recollection
I swear that ain’t nothin’ new
I been having trouble forgetting
to remember that I don’t love you

Now the last thing I remember
You were walking out the door
Yes the last thing I remember
You were walking out that door
My hand reached for the bottle
then there ain’t no more…