The Train

Currently, my favorite song is Breakdown by Jack Johnson.  It’s strange, no?, that no favorite thing seems to change as often as a song.  I’m not sure why that is--- there are really only three possibilities.  The first being that a better song comes along (which I think is the least common reason), or you can listen to the song so much that you get sick of it (I think this usually happens with songs that aren’t actually good in the first place), or lastly, you can just move on to a point where the song doesn’t speak to you anymore.  I think that this last reason is probably the most common--- and it’s why hearing a song that used to be your favorite years ago evokes such emotion.  Songs are like landmarks.

So anyway-- Breakdown has been my favorite song for almost 3 months now… If 1 year is 7 dog years, 1 year might be 20 song years… I don’t know what the exact equation is, but it’s a long time.

What has kept my interest for so long is the metaphor:

Breakdown by Jack Johnson

i hope this old train breaks down
then i can take a walk around and
see what there is to see
time is just a melody
but all the people in the streets
walk as fast as their feet can take ‘em
i just roll through town
and though my window's got a view
well the frame i’m lookin' through
seems to have no concern for now

so for now

i need this
old train to breakdown
oh please just
let me please breakdown

well this engine screams out loud
centipede gonna crawl westbound and
so i don't even make a sound cause
its gonna sting me when leave this town
and all the people in the streets
that i’d never get to meet
if these tracks don't bend somehow
and i got no time
that i got to get to where i dont need to be

so i

i need this here
old train to breakdown
oh please just
let me please breakdown
i need this
old train to breakdown
let me please break down
i wanna break on down but i can't stop now
let me break on down

but you can't stop nothin'if you got no control
of the thoughts in your mind
that you kept and you know
you dont know nothin
but you dont need to know
the wisdoms in the trees
not the glass windows
you can't stop wishin if you dont let go
the things that you find and you lose and you know
you keep on rollin'
put the moment on hold
the frame's too bright
so put the blinds down low

i need this
old train to breakdown
oh please just
let me please breakdown
wanna break on down
but i can't stop now

Of course, listening to the song is better than just reading the lyrics.  It’s hard to get a feel for it without hearing it.

I feel like, when I was in school, I was on that train…. and I might have just changed trains, and am on a different one now--- but at least I’m not looking out a window wishing that I was going somewhere else anymore.

When I quit school, I worried a lot of people.  It was just not comprehensible-- and I understand why…. they just didn’t know how much I wasn’t looking forward to the life that lay ahead of me.

I worry-- I’ve always been a worrier… but one of the only things that I worry about nowadays is that something is going to happen and I won’t be able to play poker, more specifically, won’t be able to make money playing poker anymore, and that I’ll have to get back on that train.

It reminds me of another song lyric-- sung my Janis Joplin-- “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose”.  I think that this wrong though… I agree that there is a freedom associated with not having anything to lose, but it implies that freedom itself cannot be lost.