Loneliness is a funny thing for a cowboy. Funny as in strange and mysterious, not mirthful or merry. In my admittedly-limited and stereotypical broadly-stroked fantasy of this character, a cowboy both cherishes solitude, yet struggles with the loneliness such a stance often ends up yielding. A certain lonesomeness is part of many a cowboy – in the wistful restlessness that often leads someone to becoming a cowboy.
I look to the moon, she’s the only one
Who sees what I do, what I’ve become
I’ve fallen for you, they say it’s wrong
A carpenter’s son, who can hear my song
River of love, you carved your canyon
Carries me out, from the place I’m hidin
Will tonight prove, what I’ve known for so long
Don’t let me go on alone
A heart is a fickle thing you can hear it but you just can’t find it
Scavenging for your love through bones of what’s been left behind
To the stars and the moon, I’m howling for you
But an echo is the only reply
Tonight, the coyote ain’t the only one crying
This marks one of the darker turns of the cowboy’s journey, one that comes as the first fall nights turn cold. We forget how much night will come to dominate these next few months until it’s here and all turns dark so early. As much as I welcome the fall – and these days I largely do – it’s still shocking when it happens. The first hard frost is somewhere soon, like some foreboding promise lingering in the back of your mind, not letting you enjoy yourself fully until it happens, until the worry is done – and even then, it will have already become such a habit that it won’t depart so quickly.
The wind, cold, and dark, you feel the tension
You make your mark, in this all friction
Desert empty, I’ve never been so hollow
You leave the tracks, wherever you go I will follow
A heart is a fickle thing you can hear it but you just can’t find it
Scavenging for your love through bones of what’s been left behind
To the stars and the moon, I’m howling for you
But an echo is the only reply
Tonight, the coyote ain’t the only one crying
For this Hump Night of Wednesday, when the work-week is over halfway done, here’s a bluesy bit of music to see us through to the weekend. Heartbreak doesn’t allow itself to be bound or limited by arbitrary timeframes. A weekday or a weekend is all the same to sorrow. Duration matters only slightly less, and some would argue not at all. Sadness will persist as long as it wants, and as long as we allow it. Sometimes there is no choice.
Once you’ve tasted blood, then you’d understand it
Denying myself, would leave me out here stranded
A heart is a fickle thing you can hear it but you just can’t find it
Scavenging for your love through bones of what’s been left behind
To the stars and the moon, I’m howling for you
But an echo is the only reply
Tonight, the coyote ain’t the only one crying
PS – As we told our favorite Uncle to try to get him to stop smoking, ‘Smoking is rat poison!‘ We repeat it here despite the featured photo, which is only a pose. All of life is a pose, sometimes a dark pose, and sometimes a pose in the darkness.
