Absence

Wow. I haven't blogged in quite some time. I keep meaning to, but then the essays pour in, and this week the final exam, and then I have to catch up on reality TV. Simon Cowell is like crack. And then the kitchen's a mess and laundry piles up. But I'm back. The prospectus was turned in, fully signed-off yesterday. Huzzah.

*

Over on Fishblog, Aaron posts about Neil Young, specifically, "After the Goldrush." Carter and Larissa and I were discussing Neil over beer the other weekend, and Carter mentioned, proudly, that he had just purchased "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere," to which I replied, "You have to get 'After the Goldrush'." The song and album are at the top of my Neil list.

And so, to answer Aaron, I think that even if Neil is imprecise, and "lie" stands in for "wrong," you still have a compelling song lyric. I imagine the imprecision Tieger notes is grounded in making the distinction that a lie is intentional, and if it's not intentional, it's simply a mistake. I'm not sure I totally buy that distinction. One can lie and not be aware of, right?

I'm trying to imagine such a situation.

BUT the verse Aaron quoted (my favorite, too) is not the whole song. Let's look at the rest of it:

Well, I dreamed I saw the knights in armor coming
Sayin' something about a queen
There were peasants singin' and drummers drumming
And the archer split the tree
There was a fanfare blowin' to the sun
That floated on the breeze
Look at mother nature on the run in the nineteen seventies
Look at mother nature on the run in the nineteen seventies

I was lyin' in a burned out basement
With a full moon in my eyes
I was hopin' for a replacement
When the sun burst through the skies
There was a band playin' in my head
And I felt like getting high
Thinkin' about what a friend had said,
I was hopin' it was a lie
Thinkin' about what a friend had said,
I was hopin' it was a lie

Well, I dreamed I saw the silver spaceships flying
In the yellow haze of the sun
There were children crying and colors flying
All around the chosen ones
All in a dream, all in a dream
The loading had begun
Flyin' mother nature's silver seed
To a new home in the sun
Flyin' mother nature's silver seed
To a new home in the sun

Obviously, there's an environmental angle here. I should ask some of my eco-critic colleagues. The middle verse does seem a bit out of place. I always imagined that the friend had predicted some sort of environmental crisis that would entail leaving Earth. However, to be precise, he wouldn't really be lying...or would he? Dammit, Aaron. I'm confused.

When I saw Neil perform this tune back in, was it '92? It was late summer, before the release of "Harvest Moon," he replaced "nineteen seventies" with "twentieth century."