Friday, February 5, 2016

Don't Look Back



The song playing at the restaurant I was at for lunch had the following lyrics:
Oh Lord, why have you forsaken me?
Got me down in Mississippi where I don't want to be.
Switch Mississippi for Alabama and that was me 6 months ago. It was ironic because I went yesterday and got my new Vermont license plates and driver's license. I am now an official citizen of Vermont. I was even able to register to vote as part of my driver's license application.  The bad thing is Becoming a Vermont citizen is quite expensive and I still have to pay for my car to be inspected and to get holes drilled on my front bumper to be able to mount the front license plate.

I'd planned to get them back on my birthday but had forgotten some of my documents and had to go home. By the time I got home, it had been almost 24 hours since I'd heard from my best friend and I tried desperately to get in touch with him only to find out that night that he'd died in a car accident. It has taken me this long to be able to go and try again. Plus, I had the afternoon off today.

Back to the song above, I had no idea who the artist was or the name of the song. I did some searching and found out that it is by The SteelDrivers and is called "Ghosts of Mississippi." Here are the full lyrics:

Late one night behind corn whiskey

I fell asleep with a guitar in my hand

I dreamed about the ghosts of Mississippi

And the blues came walkin' in like a man


Without a word I passed that guitar over

He tuned it up like I'd never seen

A crooked smile was his expression

Then he closed his eyes and began to sing


(chorus)

Oh Lord why have you forsaken me

Got me down in Mississippi where I don't want to be

Oh Lord why have you forsaken me

Got me down in Mississippi where I don't want to be


(repeat chorus)


When I woke up I looked into the mirror

I saw no reflection for a while

But as my eyes came into focus

I recognized that crooked smile


(repeat chorus)


Late one night behind corn whiskey

I fell asleep with a guitar in my hand

I dreamed about the ghosts of Mississippi

And the blues came walkin' like a man


(repeat chorus)

1 comment:

Michael Dodd said...

I remember being shocked -- shocked, I tell you! -- at how much it cost me to get a drivers license in Massachusetts back in the mid-1990s. Apparently one of the ways that politicians can claim that they are not raising taxes is to increase fees instead at a hefty rate. Of course, I entered the monastery in 1972 and for twenty years lost touch with how much most everything costs.

Nice song, BTW.