There are times in my recovery when Jason Isbell is my Meeting.
His songs seep into my soul.
This one is the current therapy session.
Children of Children
Jason Isbell
Pictures of the farm before us
Old men in a gospel chorus Sephia
And saddle horses easy on the reins
Eighty-one a motor in your mama’s seventeen again
She’s squinting at the dusty wind
The anger of the plains
You and I were almost nothing
Pray to God that God was bluffing
seventeen ain’t old enough to reason with the pain
How could we expect to stay in love
When neither knew the meaning
Of the difference of sacred and profane
I was riding on my mother’s hip
She was shorter than the corn
All the years I took from her
Just by being born.
Didn’t mean to break the cycle
At seventeen I went by Michael
No one ever called by my own name anyway
Half full generations
Living all these expectations
Giving way to one late to have a baby on the way
You were riding on your mother’s hip
She was shorter than the corn
All the years you took from her
Just by being born
Someone somewhere else, a revived thread about loves/hates, cites americana as a hate. Pity that. Pity them.
Great song and the best on the album.
But one line jars for me – ‘Didn’t mean to break the cycle
At seventeen I went by Michael’, that Cycle/Michael rhyme is just wrong.
This led me to revisit “Southbound”. What a magnificent album. Shows what the bottom of the cliff looks like and gets you back from the edge. “Elephant” is one of the most terrifying songs I’ve ever heard…