There was a time, in that lost era of my early manhood, when I judged life to be essentially a balancing act between work (writing and music) and love — or, more properly, romance.

In an earlier post, I wrote about the beautiful Icelandic girl who was, briefly, a muse, mentor, and colleague in the painfully difficult reinvention of myself from poet to songwriter. (Far more painful, without doubt, for those around me.)

This song was the first of my early songs to win largely favorable comment from my friend and it was the first time I ever felt what I’d later realize was a form of professional pride (which does, indeed, I would later learn, often go before a nasty, if occasionally comic, pratfall).

To be frank… it was probably one of the first of my songs to have recognizably repeating sections and some sort of coherent structure. My earliest work leaned hard toward the fever-dream stream-of-nonsense school — with literary, metaphysical, and scriptural references thrown in to spice up the already indigestible gumbo.

In fact, this song refers to that phase in my life (talking to girls all night and playing long rambling songs til dawn… it was a phase I had a hard time growing past). My artistic ambivalence and deep-seated alienation may have seemed like shtick — sometimes they even did to me — but in the long run it became obvious that they were all too real and, at the risk of being overly self-revelatory, I think it’s safe to say that that reality permeates my creative work.

Ya think?

Carrot

(In the Course of Events)

In the course of events
I’ve seen my goals hanging just like a carrot in front of my nose
In the struggle for those higher attainments, hell,
I’ve been to the top
and I’ve seen the drop on the other side

And I don’t care if your money’s no good
I don’t care if both your legs are wood
I don’t care what your ma says to do
Just come away with me

It takes time to get where you want to go
and its never quite the same when you get there
but that doesn’t stop me cause there’s still a couple things
I’d like to try with you and you never can tell
it might work out all right

You can sit and talk about life all day
as much as you can talk your questions wont go away
it’s a conversation that leads me to say
just come away with me

I’ve been burned before
and I’ll get burned again
I guess that’s the same for everyone
I know what I need
I know what I want
I know what I get —
they don’t always correspond

You can sit and talk about life all day
as much as you can talk your questions wont go away
it’s a conversation that leads me to say
just come away with me

(C)1974 TK Major