A Moment's Notice:
Striving for Awareness of Each Moment,
Reflecting on Events of the Moment
When the
ratio of wrinkled blouses to pressed ones becomes shamelessly close I finally
pull my iron off the wire shelf in my bedroom.
I unfold the ironing board with its characteristic squeal (which all
such boards possess---test this in any hotel room) and set to work.
I usually
watch TV as I iron, putting my hands on auto-pilot as my conscious brain
unravels a mystery on “NCIS” or figures out how the boy will get the girl (or
vice versa) at the end of a Hallmark Channel movie. Straighten out the collar, back and forth
then back again, move on to one sleeve.
This morning
I had time to iron only the blouse I planned to wear today so I didn’t haul the
iron and board in front of the TV; I listened to my iPod instead. And so I stumbled upon the concept of the
three-minute novel.
Allison
Krauss and Union Station told me a story of love finally found and soon to be
lost. Ms. Krauss gave voice to a woman
who begs her beloved to stay---hasn’t she built her world around him? Can’t he see he is the foundation of her
world, even if she doesn’t occupy that same place in his heart?
At least the
heartbroken protagonist of that tale lived to tell it, even if not happily ever
after. The narrator of Marty Robbins’s
“El Paso” wasn’t so lucky. Another love
story, this one unrequited from beginning to end---that bewitching Felina
didn’t even seem to care that the cowboy loved her with all of his heart. He loved her so much that he was compelled to
shoot a handsome stranger for flirting with her. The storyteller then describes his frantic
escape on a stolen horse and his equally frantic return to Felina, a return
driven by his overwhelming ardor.
Our cowboy
is killed of course; whether it’s for the murder of the handsome stranger or
the theft of the horse is not clear. But
just when I’m ready to dismiss Felina as a cold-hearted wench she rushes to him
and cradles him as his arms as he dies.
At least he did get one kiss out of the whole mess.
One sleeve
then another. Now on to the front , then
turn the shirt around to the back, and finally complete the rotation. The wrinkles disappear beneath the iron’s
steaming sole plate as the singers weave their stories.
There is
much to be said for the novelists I’ve enjoyed in my youth and adulthood: Charles
Dickens, J.R.R. Tolkien, Bernard Malamud, Justin Cronin, and Susan Howatch, to
name a few. But they have tens of
thousands of words to develop characters, advance a plot, and put together a
seamless conclusion. Songwriters have a
few dozen at most, but that’s more than enough for the most talented among
them.
My favorite
song of the moment is “Something That We Do,” recorded by Clint Black and
written by Black and Skip Ewing. It
doesn’t lend itself to mental movie making as “El Paso” does but I think it does
give an accurate definition of love in the real world, and that’s no small
thing.
What is your
favorite song? Is it a novel or a poem? Let me know in the “Comments” box below.