Song of the Week - May 3, 2010 - Nothing Left To Take

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PotatoPicker
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Song of the Week - May 3, 2010 - Nothing Left To Take

Postby PotatoPicker » Mon May 03, 2010 12:12 pm

Nothing Left To Take
In the first thirty seconds
She told him she was leaving
She picked up a one way suitcase
He stood there disbelieving
Then a minute passed
And she turned and walked
Left him without the means to talk
She was history

In the moment the first hour passed
His foot down on the throttle
His right hand left the steering wheel
For a half empty bottle
The whiskey stings on the first sip
Then it flows like water through the lips
She is history

You can break apart
Same as any man
She can shake your faith
Like only a woman can
But the hurt, the ache,
Won't stop till there's
Nothing left to take from you

In the fifth hour, in the twilight
There was a crush of steel and gravel
His car, it hung up in mid-air
Then it came down like a gavel
And he swore he saw an angle in the light
Then the wipers woke him
Left to right
She is history

There's healing time, killing time
Time will take its time
And its only crime
Is what you let it steal from you.
Time, time, time
Jeff

PotatoPicker
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Re: Song of the Week - May 3, 2010 - Nothing Left To Take

Postby PotatoPicker » Mon May 03, 2010 12:22 pm

(First off – let me apologize profusely – I messed up in my calendar and am delivering this a week late. April is always a very hectic month for me getting both the baseball and softball going……. Big comments getting ready for posting now.)
Jeff

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Re: Song of the Week - May 3, 2010 - Nothing Left To Take

Postby PotatoPicker » Mon May 03, 2010 1:03 pm

The first two or three times I heard this song I must confess it was sort of a throw away. I was so overwhelmed by everything else I had heard on the CD that by the time I reached the last song my mind and ears were no longer connected. And so it went for my first few listens. Then fate intervened and this song came on in my car in the first few moments of a drive when I was by myself – and I had to stop. And listen to it. And play it again. And listen even more carefully. My first thought was a line from an old Kris Kristofferson song To Beat the Devil – “You been reading my mail.”

The line that grabbed me hardest and would not let me go was “In the moment the first hour passed.” I can remember getting news something like this – and that bizarre incongruity of time stopping and standing still – and in the background flying past as I was completely stunned. That first moment of knowledge lasted forever – our lives hanging in the air in front of me and slowly dissipating like a puff of smoke until there was nothing there. It took only a moment for the first hour to go by and for me to realize that everything had changed.

As much as many of us wish it to be otherwise – we don’t really control our lives or our destinies. None of us are protected against the sorrows or disappointments or sufferings of any other person. I don’t have some magic immunity pill from disaster.

The things we hold deepest and closest to our hearts, that are the most certain in our lives, that we think will never change and that we somehow believe – mistakenly – that we control – those are our foundations. When one of those foundations is removed from one’s life – in processes that seemingly last seconds but really last years – we are changed and shaken and emptied. And the healing for that takes years – and I think only happens once we have surrendered to the loss and accepted it. I think that happens when there is nothing left to take – because I have realized I need to give over everything willingly at that point and empty myself before I can heal.

Minor notes – I absolutely love the line “one way suitcase.” What a profound statement bundled in a tidy description.

I love the unresolved way the song ends musically. It’s like the next step is ours….

“And its only crime is what you let it steal from you.” The time we let it steal is not yesterday or tomorrow. The time we let it steal is today.
Jeff

paddyinthepub
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Re: Song of the Week - May 3, 2010 - Nothing Left To Take

Postby paddyinthepub » Tue May 04, 2010 8:39 am

When Karen mentioned it was Jeff's turn here the first thing that came to my mind was that it might just be pickin time. :wink:

This week's sotw is off to a great start, thanks, Jeff, I really enjoyed reading your insights and takeaways from the song. Your zeroing in on one line in particular got me to thinking about that line. It was familiar. Didn't take long to realize I had heard the line before. Not to the letter, but more to the idea of a line like that one. It's brilliant, really.

I'm a guy who loves to connect the dots whether they are actually there or only exist in my musical brain. Being a student (I think I can call it that) of music, it was always cool to learn how back in the 70's the likes of CSNY and Joni Mitchell were feeding off each other's songs and creating whole new songs. Years later, John Gorka, in liner notes, described the idea for one song as "the germ seed" -- I love that phrase and use it often.

It's likely that songwriters, some of them anyway, can tap into a feeling or a line and have it stick in their subconcious to be retrieved later when they are putting pen to paper in song creation. Who knows if that's the case here. Matters not, really. It's mostly a fun exercise my brain plays when I recognize a line I feel I've heard before in a new song I love...

"In the first thirty seconds
She told him she was leaving
She picked up a one way suitcase
He stood there disbelieving"


I submit, for my own pleasure, mostly, the song from which I think Ellis may have garnered the germ seed for the line. It's a song, it seems, we've talked about here on the forum. At the very least a youtube is out here somewhere. It's a song Robert Keen wrote and recorded early on that was later covered by Nanci Griffith on one of her early records.

I Would Change My Life

You never liked this place where we've been livin all alone
So you packed up your things and bought a one way ticket home
Leavin never hurts as much as bein left behind


While pondering this, another song rushed in...

"Yesterday" by Paul McCartney. I had to smile at the thought of how that one song likely led to ALL the heartbreak songs that followed.

Yesterday
All my troubles seemed so far away
Now it looks as though they're here to stay
Oh, I believe in yesterday



Seth Glier's words come to mind:
"Ellis Paul has the best fans..it's like they're songwriter connoisseurs"
"once we're inside, it's a carnival ride" ~ ellis paul
paddy

monicar
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Re: Song of the Week - May 3, 2010 - Nothing Left To Take

Postby monicar » Tue May 04, 2010 9:24 am

WOW, Jeff! I just got the chills reading your post. Very well put! Wish I could organize my thoughts and write like that!

When Ellis was doing the voting thing for the song title, One Way Suitcase was my pick! I didn't win, obviously! :lol:

This song always brings me back to Vermont and all of the laughs we got when Ellis was reading the titles people chose, especially the one that had a bad word in it!

Monica R.

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KarenZ
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Re: Song of the Week - May 3, 2010 - Nothing Left To Take

Postby KarenZ » Tue May 04, 2010 11:57 am

And how I got blamed for the suggestion "Like a song I'd like to crank you" :!: :!: :!:

Thanks, Jeff for such thoughtful comments. Isn't it grand when a song you've "heard" before suddenly clicks-in.....and it's like you're hearing it for the first time? When the student is ready, the teacher appears. Or something like that. :wink:

Seems like time is a recurring theme on this CD. Has anyone else noticed that? Earlier times, time moving on, driving home time, "someplace sometime", hard times, time, time, time....

KarenZ
monicar wrote:This song always brings me back to Vermont and all of the laughs we got when Ellis was reading the titles people chose, especially the one that had a bad word in it!

Monica R.
"Some people are born to make great art and others are born to appreciate it. It is a kind of talent in itself, to be an audience, whether you are the spectator in the gallery or you are listening to the voice of the world's greatest soprano. Not everyone can be the artist. There have to be those who witness the art, who love and appreciate what they have been privileged to see." -- Ann Patchett in Bel Canto.


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