Willie Nelson
once upon a time it was long ago, but the kid who had been yanked outa Brasil and dumped into this country, then moved from one aunt to another, had already arrived in Perryton, Texas, where the aunt had enough love to accommodate two more kids, and enough room for them since her two kids were gone already, one in college and the other finding his own way into "business", whatever that meant, so the kid had a chance to look around without being terrified, once upon a time when all that had happened, the air around the kid was filled with American country and western music. Hank Williams and Hank Thompson, Patsy Cline and Kitty Wells, Johnny Cash and Jimmy Horton, Marty Robbins and Jim Reeves, Faron Young and Ferlin Husky, the Someone Brothers and the Somebody Sisters, and at least a dozen others that I knew by heart then. (Robert Graves requests of school children that they learn their history by rote but learn his poems by heart.) oh man, I might not have understood the English that flowed around and over me and mostly beyond me back then, but I knew those lonesome railroad sounds, and I knew about being in prison, and I knew about feeling heartbroken without ever having been sure about love. I knew about looking around me and longing for some girl company and finding none, chasing any away as soon as I spoke in my Brasilian accent with my odd construction of sentences. I was like Jon Snow, of course. I knew nothing, I knew nothing. What those country and western singers sang about was way beyond anything I had ever known, but I knew the ache and the pain and the longing. I think I remember once finding a safe place and hiding in it and just crying and crying and crying until I didn't need to cry any more, then having to clean myself up and wait til I could look boy-tough enough that I could sneak out of there and navigate the world with other people in it. I was so alone. yes, I had a sister available, yes, I had an aunt and an uncle available, but I didn't know how to connect or share. and that aloneness is the heart of country-western music still. I didn't know Willie Nelson then. I think he was still nosing around the edges of country-western music, trying to get in. but a sad thing, or a glorious thing, I don't know, happened to country-western music. it became popular. it cleaned itself up and became middle-of-the-road then became Christian and became middle class. I just about divorced myself from country music. but along came Willie Nelson and Waylon Jennings and Johnny Cash rekindled himself and Kris Kristofferson invented himself, and they knew country music like I did. they knew about trains and pickups and dogs and prison and mainly they knew about being so goddamed alone even with a cityful of people elbow to elbow around you. and Willie still does, or the last time I heard him he still did. bless him for a trunkful of country-western songs that mostly can't be messed up even when someone slick sings them. bless him for a chestful of music recorded so we'll remember what real country-western music once sounded like. bless him for songs that bring those feelings into the 70s and 80s and 90s and maybe even into the twenty-first century. bless you, Mr. Willie Nelson, may you live long after you do.
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