You are no Sam Cooke, but the guitar stands in the corner. You hear one of his songs, an old and familiar one, and it suddenly speaks across the decades as if it was written yesterday and recorded last night. You pull up the chord charts and damn, if those are not familiar to your hands, if only those callouses had not worn off. You sing in the living room, alone in the dark, accompanied by the trusty Monterey, the new/old guitar, and the lyrics wrap themselves around you like a blanket, like a hug, like Sam’s hand is resting on your shoulder, tapping out the time and he is not offended by what you are doing, maybe he is cracking a smile, shaking his head at this white boy across the ocean. Maybe he is just glad to see this old song doing some good, long after it was sent like a love letter to the universe, a message in a bottle that he threw into a messy ocean.
And now, the microphones are pulled from boxes because why the hell not, better to go down in flames trying to play this song and somehow document it than curl up and surrender to the deafening heat, to the latest news, to shame and fear. The only thing worse than playing a song poorly is not playing it at all. But that old shit-talking devil is still on your shoulder, snickering, asking who the hell are you to do this, and how dare you, who the hell are you kidding. The devil may just be right, but these days there is so little left to lose. I wrote a lyric not so long ago “don’t ask a dying man for his shoes” and that might just sum this dilemma up - we cling to whatever roots are poking out, as the mountain slides into the sea, so please don’t take them away from us. We have so little left, so let’s fantasize that these things are still of use, that if we build some shelves and pull those old books from their boxes, record those old songs from the ether, imagining that will mean something tomorrow - as so many Romes burn.
Once you get past the shame of not being Sam Cooke, you can still get somewhere. You can go to sleep knowing you tried something difficult and weathered the uncomfortable parts. You stuck your head out of the foxhole as the sky turned black, and maybe you will sleep well for once.
You are no Sam Cooke (a love letter to the universe)