Cowboy ambivalence is that sort of mood that overtakes you like a fever – and it doesn’t only afflict the cowboy. Cowboys do seem more susceptible to it, however, having some sort of special access to things that others don’t – same thing that sets apart poets and temptresses. Artists and songwriters and sculptors are different in a similar way – anyone who feels slightly removed from the mass of human experience – those people who do what they’re supposed to do, laugh at the right moments, cry on cue, and go through life without ever truly wondering what it’s all about – they merely accept and make the best of it. I’ve often wondered if that is the true key to happiness – just giving in and not challenging or questioning or doubting. A blind sort of faith – willful ignorance, or a deliberate refusal to see anything other…
You know you shook me baby
You shook me all night long
I said you know you shook me baby
Oh, you shook me all night long
Ah, you know you kept on shakin’ me darlin’
Till you done messed up my happy home
More than perhaps anyone else, a cowboy lives for the moment. It is their guiding force and their fallibility in one fell, fatal swoop. They ruin their future for the present moment, they wreck their past for the here and now, and they live in the hour at hand in a method of mindfulness that most of us can only occasionally access, and that only if we’re extremely lucky and willing to lose ourselves for a bit. It’s scary to really let go like that. If you’ve never done it, you can’t know the risk involved. The risk or the glory.
You know you moved me baby
Just like a hurricane
You know you moved me baby
You moved me just like a hurricane, uh huh
You know you moved me sweetheart
Just like a earthquake to the land
Oh, sometimes I wonder
What my poor family’s gonna do
Oh, sometimes, sometimes I wonder
What my poor family’s gonna do
Oh, you know you, you made me mistreat them honey
Ah, oh I’m madly in love with you
You know you shook me, shook me baby
You shook me all night long, uh huh
I said you shook me, shook me baby
Shook me all night long, uh huh
Oh yeah, you shook me, shook me baby
Shook me all, all, all night long, uh huh
The mood of a cowboy is variable at best. It’s why they operate as cowboys. They go with the flow, whistling on the wind, letting the vibes hit and move them as they arrive. Such a mercurial and malleable existence isn’t one for the stable or stalwart of mind. But oh the heights they sometimes achieve, the loftiness they sometimes reach – the highest of highs that mere mortals tied down by morals and responsibilities and other like chains and locks can never quite attain.
The cowboy knows how to shake.
The cowboy is less skilled at being shook.
It’s one thing to stay atop a bucking bronc intent on throwing you off – it’s quite another to stay atop the heart of another human.
