Open Mic

When I first heard the song “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go,” I could barely sit through it while it played on the radio. It’s the saddest Bob Dylan song ever, which is saying something, though it is also my favorite. I learned how to play it on the uke once I could finally listen to the whole thing without sobbing, but I could never quite get to the last verse without choking up.

I couldn’t manage that song without projecting all kinds of relationship stuff on it. If you’ve been with me for a while you know that I was in a commuter marriage for many, many years. The husband and I would spend a lot of time apart every year, half a planet between us for months at a time. We did this for a decade, I think, longer, maybe. Dylan just punched me right in the gut with the lyrics:

Yer gonna make me wonder what I’m doin’
Stayin’ far behind without you
Yer gonna make me wonder what I’m sayin’
Yer gonna make me give myself a good talkin’ to

It’s all about just letting go of love to go do something else and wondering what the hell you were thinking of even while you are compelled beyond sense to go somewhere else. There you are, totally wracked with regret at your separation while at the same time, you are getting on the goddamn airplane because there is just no way in hell you can stay where you are. I know this feeling. It’s crying in airports and waking up in the middle of the night to find that the other side of the bed is cold and wandering out into places that are home or not only to find that you are weirdly ecstatic to be in Santiago or Dar es Salaam or Seattle alone. And then, while peeling a label off a beer bottle, you think, “Why am I here alone when there’s love for me if I could just sit still?”

See what I mean about the projection?

I tried to play that song for years, I am not exaggerating, and I was never able to get through it without falling apart just a little bit. I’d take it out and dust it off every time we had open mic at the uke club, and I’d choke my way through it at home and I think, yeah, not ready yet, and I’d play something else. Not because of my inability to play it — it’s not hard, and I can manage to do it with just enough style so I’m not too embarrassed. No, I couldn’t get through it because it made me too sad. Every  departure I’ve ever made was packed into those verses.

I’ll look for you in Honolulu
San Francisco, Ashtabula
Yer gonna have to leave me now, I know
But I’ll see you in the sky above
In the tall grass, in the ones I love
Yer gonna make me lonesome when you go

I’ve been Honolulu alone. And San Francisco, too. And while haven’t been to Ashtabula — in fact, I had to look it up, it’s in Ohio — I was in Buenas Aires and Dublin and Port Lockroy and Vancouver and countless cities, alone. I love being in Honolulu alone, I have such fond memories of walking down Kalakaua at night breathing in the ocean, or going down to the water to swim early, 6am, 630, with nothing but a towel and my hotel room key. But I’d hear those Dylan verses in my head — “I’ll look for you in Honolulu” — and I’d look, and I would be lonesome indeed.

Some songs get into your head, the notes turn into a series of arrival and departure gates, of skies above a North Dakota highway and the tall grass of the Serengeti. It’s not surprising that I couldn’t play that song without breaking up, just a little. It voiced the fractured reflection of my own wanderings.

In the past six months or so, I’ve been quite happy to sit still and I’ve been able to master “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome…”  Well, not master it, I don’t want to flatter myself that much, plus, it would be lying, I don’t master much more than intention when it comes to music. But I can pick up my uke and play the song, and sing it. I’m shaky when I play alone, my hands shake, my voice is not strong. But it’s just stage fright;  that passes. If I hesitate a little bit towards the end, it’s nothing more than the memory of how very sad that song used to make me.

I played it, finally, at open mic, and I did not cry.

But I’ll see you in the sky above
In the tall grass, in the ones I love
Yer gonna make me lonesome when you go.