Swan Songs

Among my favorite bands of all time (I have 7 albums and six hours worth of their music, and aim to acquire at least two more in the next year) is the Marshall Tucker Band. Led Zeppelin may have started Swan Song records, but if there is any band that epitomizes the ramblin', road hungry, yondering impulse that burns in a man, it was the MTB. From classics like Can't Ya See, Heard It in a Love Song, Take the Highway, and Running Like the Wind, to less well known greats like Anyway the Wind Blows Rider and Ramblin' (which they performed both as a burning gateway to adventure and a weary longing for freedom), to newer songs like Rider of Your Life and Beyond the Horizon, these guys knew the wanderlust, the yondering, what I sometimes refer to simply as "the itch".

The urge to get away - from responsibilities, ties, the familiar, the past - is there. Sometimes even simply the urge just to go somewhere takes hold of me. My dad pointed out that women vacation for the destination, while men (or at least, men in my family) vacation for the going. I don't completely buy into the notion of the journey being the goal, rather than the destination being the goal... it strikes me as too buddhist, and I am reminded that the journey to heaven is not nearly as important or awesome as heaven itself. Indeed, journeys can hurt, and it is in the hurt that we grow.

Despite all this talk of moving, of going, of rambling on my mind, there is a quiet, a contentment, a desire to find a place to call home. So that when I sing "if I ever settled down, you'd be my kind..." I could settle down, instead of going on to say "but I guess it's time to head on down the line..."

There is beauty in responsibility. Duty is a sublime word. There is grace in the simple life. Always moving, always going, always running, tossed about by every wind - to live this way is to hide from life and from the great beauty and grace that come with contentment. Life on the road can be just as much of an escape mechanism as sex and booze and drugs. The urge to be always moving, always doing, always busy, never stopping, never slowing, never looking around to breathe - that urge is a subtle temptation. It tells us that if we just keep going we'll never have to look back, never have to remember, never have to hurt. But that's bullshit, and we know it, just as we know that when we wake up in the morning, sober and alone, we will still be empty.

Don't run from life, from responsibilities and memories and struggles. Stand and fight, submit in humility, trust in grace. When you can't run, you crawl, and when you can't do that, you find someone to carry you. Be a simple kind of man.