Old Songs About The Old

There's a line in the John Prine song Angel From Montgomery that goes, "How the hell can a person go to work in the morning  - And come home in the evening and have nothing to say?" Believe me it happens. It's even worse when said person is unemployed and doesn't even have a job to go to in the morning or to come home from. Now imagine said person trying to write a daily blog. I would imagine he or she would eventually get to the point where the only thing to write about are the deaths of old acquaintances found in the obituaries (see yesterday's post) or the difficulties of writing about the life of a shut-in.

I suppose I could write about other John Prine songs. My favorite one is Hello In There. I think it's one of the saddest songs I know. The line about losing his son in the Korean War is heart breaking and for a guy in his twenties when he recorded it he has a voice that sounds totally believable.

John Prine now at the age the character was written to be.

It's strange to think that a young man of 25 would, let alone could, write a song about old age with such authenticity.  

Old Friends by Paul Simon and recorded by Simon and Garfunkle on their classic Bookends album is about old age from the point of view of two young friends imagining what old age would be like.

Do these old friends even talk to each other these days?

The funny thing is that you seem to have to be a young person to write a song about being an old person otherwise you just end up with a song that sounds like a list of complaints.

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