Heath Street - Song For Jim Carroll

It’s been a tough week, and I can’t bring myself to get up and dance tonight. Just want to kick back, have a glass of wine, enjoy the sunset and listen to a guy sing me some thoughtful tunes. Heath Street fits the bill perfectly. This particular song is fun because it has me thinking about Jim Carroll, who used to make me dance frenetically. I don’t know the relationship between Heath Street and Jim Carroll, so I have to make one up. Jim Carroll and I used to run around with the same sorta crowd and our memories had to be cleansed, and Jim did a wonderful cleansing for myself and many others with All The People That Died.

“In the middle of the daylight I'm walking through the valley. In the middle of the daylight, coming around, I hear the good sound”

I’ve created a (false?) scenario in my mind that Heath Street is giving us the other side of that song. What, specifically, happened to all the people that died? What a calm, tranquil picture I receive as I visit with those friends who I miss yet don’t think about as much as I used to 20 years ago.

“In the middle of the daylight I've finally got nothing in my mind. I can even dig the clutter of a hanging cloud and that's a good sign.”

Despite the violence of life in the city streets, the daisies in the graveyard remind me that it is probable that the aftermath of death caused by inappropriate uses of government will still end up the same as the death of folks who were not exposed to the extremes of humanity. I love the line, “I’ve finally got nothing on my mind” that my friend is speaking to me across the dimensions between us.

“The legend rolls on: if you don't know these things, you're gone.” Even in this light-hearted pop tune Heath Street is wise and mature enough to remind me that the scenes in the cities are not gone. There are still children dying daily for reasons very complex and deep – each year there seems to be a way to make drugs cheaper and available to younger and younger children while the authorities turn their face to the issue and pretend it isn’t there. Houston may have sent a man to the moon, but have no will and desire to clean up the streets. They have no desire to stop another generation for needing mental cleansing for knowing “all the people that died.”

Thank you Heath Street. I know I’ve taken a perfectly wonderful song and probably made up a story that was far far from your mind when you wrote it and sang it, but you have no control over the images and how they affect individuals, right? Great song that, believe me, had iot not been for the title, would have simple had me thinking of puppy dogs and warm streets. “Man in blue passing at my back. Crossing too soon, as I pass a schoolyard.”

Shoutouts for The One Time

“The one time I saw your face
The one time you fell to grace
The one time I saw your face
You blew my self away

The one time you heard me cry
The one time I couldn't lie
The one time you heard me cry
I blew your self away”

and Cambridge Song

“They’re doing work on the road outside again
To pave the way to turn a thousand schoolboys into men
I’ve had ugly thoughts, I think I’m not the only one
I don’t intend to see my father told he has no son”

and the powerful meditation of Will’s Song

“Your sneakers made it through
A linen sheet of pale blue
On a bed of wheels . . .

. . . My whole life I've been a fool
In the slow-burning afternoon
Not an hour earned
In the loneliness of time
I'll be sitting drinking my wine
To you, conqueror”

When you are in the mood for contemplation and listening a convincing voice atop some beautifully played instruments reminding you that life has a deep beauty in every single emotion we are capable of, you should have this album on hand. “I know what you're looking for, and it's okay.” Heath Street

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