Avetts in October #25: Today’s the Day

Redwoods- 2018

Today is The Avett Brothers concert in Pelham, Alabama. As hard as it is to listen to sometimes, I sure hope they play No Hard Feelings.

 

“Why does it seem so often to be a human quality to forget those who have done good things for us, and to remember those who have hurt us?” – from Sold Into Egypt by Madeleine L’Engle. 

 

“Even as a tiny girl, she would just absorb the meanness of people around her, and as that strange girl slapped her,  Margaret literally turned the other cheek. ‘I just took it,’ she said sixty years later. ” – from Ava’s Man by Rick Bragg

 

Avetts in October #24: A lot of movin’

In anticipation of The Avett Brothers concert TOMORROW, I have been writing  a series of blog posts connecting some of their lyrics to words of some of my favorite authors.

“And in every place he abandons he leaves something vital, it seems to me, and starts his new life somewhat less encrusted, like a lobster that has shed his skin and is for a time soft and vulnerable.” –E.B. White

I love E.B. White, best known to most for his classics, Charlotte’s Web and The Trumpet of the Swan.  But it’s his essays that I like even more.

I have moved a bit in my adult life. We have lived in 11 houses in our 40 years of marriage. I get what White says about leaving something vital behind. We’ve left friends and family too many times. A few moves, though, let us, like the lobster, shed a skin and leave behind an old unwanted crust. Every new house, every new beginning, brings with it a time of being soft and vulnerable. But, nearly every house became a home that was hard to leave. All I know is I don’t want to live encrusted like the lobster. I want to be soft and vulnerable.

A lot of movin’, A lot of rollin’

A lot of drivin’, A lot of strollin’

A lot of leavin’ here

A lot of arrivin’ there

Avetts in October #23: Love in real life

In anticipation of The Avett Brothers concert on October 25th, I’ve been posting a series  connecting some of their lyrics to words of some of my favorite authors.

 

“Ah wants things sweet wid mah marriage lak when you sit under a pear tree and think…”

– Janie,  from Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston

 

 

“…what they had discovered in those years was not the love people whisper about over candles, but the kind they need when their baby girl is coughing at three 0’clock in the morning.” -from Ava’s Man by Rick Bragg

 

 

From “Love Like The Movies” 

 

I don’t want to be in love like the movies

Cause in the movies they’re not in love at all

With a twinkle in their eyes

They’re just saying their lines

So we can’t be in love like the movies. 

 

 

Avetts in October #22: Brothers

 

1st Christmas in Jacksonville – 1965

 

Katherine Paterson is another one of my favorite children’s authors. Many of you may be familiar with her book, Bridge to Terabithia, which has been made into a movie. Twice. Two others that are also wonderful are The Great Gilly Hopkins (also a movie) and Jip, His Story.

 

“…among  children who grow up together in a family there run depths of feeling that will permeate their souls for both good and ill as long as they live.”  – The Invisible Child- On Reading and Writing Books for Children by Katherine Paterson

One of the first TAB songs I ever heard was Murder in the City. It’s still one of my favorites.

 

“I wonder which brother is better

Which one our parents loved the most

I sure did get in lots of trouble

They seemed to let the other go

A tear fell from my father’s eyes

I wondered what my dad would say

He said, “I love you and I’m proud of you both

In so many different ways”

 

 

 

Avetts in October #21: A Sock Without a Boot

 

“And Tiller? Without you, I’m just a sock without a boot” – Sairy from Ruby Holler by Sharon Creech

Sharon Creech is one of my very favorite children’s authors. Her books are full of endearing characters and heartwarming stories. Just like The Avett Brothers’ Songs.

Sairy’s words to her husband, Tiller, remind me of these lyrics from I Wish I Was.

 

I’m not a song

I am not a sweater

I’m not a fire

I am something better

I’m a man in love writing you a letter

Will you take it

Will you keep it

Will you read it

Believe it

I love you

I’m sorry

 

I love watching the thought process as the song is put together. As a poet I can so relate to this.

 

Avetts in October #20: You remember what I say, son

Georgia – July, 2009

“If’n you live, Will Tweedy, you go’n be tempted, and you go’n suffer, and you go’n die.  Ain’t no way out of it. But with the Lord’s hep, you can stand up to temptation, and live th’ew the bad times, and look Death in the eye. You remember what I say, son” – Grandpa from Cold Sassy Tree by Olive Ann Burns

 

I can’t add much to the words above and the lyrics below.

 

Live and die, we’re the same.

You rejoice, I complain,

but you and I, we’re the same.

Live and die, we’re the same.

You and I, we’re the same.

Hear my voice, know my name,

you and I, we’re the same.   

 

Avetts in October #19: Winter In My Heart

Asheville, 2009

 

In anticipation of The Avett Brothers concert on October 25th, I’ve been writing  a series of blog posts connecting some of their lyrics to words of some of my favorite authors.

I’d tell myself to stop judging others. And then thirty seconds later, I’d do it again. This, I realized, is why I don’t like going to crowded parks. It’s not just that I don’t like all the other people. I don’t like the person I become.  – Lassoing the Sun – Mark Woods

I think there are times for many of us that we don’t care for the person we’ve become. There can be many reasons, such as  grief, loneliness, stress, or other reasons, that cause us to act like someone that we wouldn’t want to be friends with.  In Winter In My Heart, I feel the sadness and helplessness. I’ve been there. And the line, “I don’t know what the reasons are” is gripping. But, winter is a season, though it can sometimes a long one.

 

It must be winter in my heart

There’s nothing warm in there at all

I missed the summer and the spring

The floating yellow leaves of fall

 

 

Avetts in October #18: I and Love and You

In talking about  how we act toward survivors when someone dies, Madeleine L’Engle said,

“What is there to say? Only, ‘I love you, and I care,’ and sometimes we are afraid to say even that.”

The Avetts have a song about telling someone you love them. I’ve mentioned it before and posted a video, but I think the version below is my favorite.

Three words that became hard to say

I and love and you

 

 

Avetts in October #17: Loss of a Dream

 

In anticipation of The Avett Brothers concert on October 25th, I am writing a series of blog posts connecting some of their lyrics to words of some of my favorite authors.

 

“Until I can mourn the loss of a dream I cannot be comforted enough to have vision for a fresh one.”  from The Irrational Season (1977)  by Madeleine L’Engle

 

There have been so many times over the years that things just didn’t turn out like I thought they would. But I’m a better woman for having gone through it.

 

I remember crying over you,

and I don’t mean like a couple of tears and I’m blue.

I’m talking about collapsing and screaming at the moon,

but I’m a better man for having gone through it.

Yes, I’m a better man for having gone through.

 

Avetts in October # 16: I have some better words now

 

Me and Mom

 

Don’t know which I love most: No Hard Feelings or Through My Prayers. Post #15 was about Mom. This one’s for Mom, too.

 

 

“Now all my thoughts about them start with knowing they are gone.”  from Hannah Coulter by Wendell Berry

 

The pages of the calendar kept turning away
I have some better words now, but it’s too late to say them to you…

And yes I know you loved me I could see it in your eyes
And it was in your struggle and it was in your mind
And it was in the smile you gave me when I was a kid…

-Through My Prayers