pt. 3 "I was born in an abundance of inherited sadness"

"Jacksonville Sklyline", by Whiskeytown, from Pneumonia
Probably one of my favorite songs ever written, and definitely one of Ryan Adams' most vulnerable. It's even, it's honest, and the line in the title never fails to conjure up thoughts of me, and my father, and my aunt, and generations of our family who were crippled by demons that nobody else could see.
Some of us were lucky enough for it to be a temporary thing.

I always like songs about small-town America. It always feels like the place where I come from, even though I came up in a college town, which makes no sense at all.
I've always wanted to be like my dad, and his brothers too, the small-town boys who were smarter than everyone else, who knew their politics and literature, and who wanted to drink a cold can of beer while talking about it.

Wow, that went off track fast. The point is that this song is an honest, and moving depiction of small-town ambition and change, and some regret.
Importantly, to me, I was a huge fan of this record during the summer of 2001. I was working at Skinnyguy.com, sweating and smoking and drinking shitty wine all summer, Libby was off in Paris for the first half, and I started to figure out, just a little bit, what kind of man I wanted to be someday. It took, and is still taking, a long time to get there, but that summer, and in a weird way this song, gave some shape to what I knew in my heart was important, and what I wanted to be the important things in my life, then and in the future.


"somewhere the night sky hangs like a blanket, shoot it with my capgun just to make it seem like stars"