Thursday Thoughts – Oh Mexico
Sounds so sweet with the sun sinking low
Moon so bright like to light up the night
Make everything all right
James Taylor. I heard somewhere that he wrote that song when he was supposed to go to Mexico and got sick and couldn’t make the trip. Last week I did make the trip. Flew down to Los Cabos for a few days of reflection and sunburn and whale watching and surf sounds at night, so loud the waves kept me from sleeping. While I was down there I felt such a funny combination of perfectly relaxed and completely dissatisfied, longing for something just out of reach. Which sounds sort of like complaining and sort of over-the-top cliche emotional, but it’s the best way I can describe how it feels just before I start to write again.
I hibernate in the winter. I only figured this out last year, after panicking for the umpteenth time that I would never write again, I’d dried up, it was all over! Then I realized, as spring approached and I got this itchy longing feeling that then started spilling out into new songs, I realized oh – I just hibernate. I have seasons too. What a relief. Why did it take me 20 years to figure this out? I have no idea. Sometimes I’m slow.
So I knew, when I had that strange feeling last weekend, that something was getting ready to trickle down into a tune. What I wrote yesterday is sort of about Mexico, and sort of about everything. It’s about uncertainty, physical and emotional walls, the unknown, death, life, the fear of the journey and the willingness to keep walking.
So here are the new lyrics, and I’ll debut the song next week with the boys at my show.
Some Answers Hide
I fell asleep and woke up down in Mexico
Truth be told I don’t even know
I don’t know how I got there
There were fevered dreams of ripping seams and hearts that broke
Thickening clouds of billowing smoke
Filling up the air
And there’s things that you ain’t never gonna know
It don’t matter now how rough or smooth the surface of the road
There’s ways that you can learn how to ride
But some answers they just hide
Some answers they just hide
I sat out underneath the burning sun down on the beach
Watched the whales dance and breach
Felt the song just out of reach
Yeah I waited till the air cooled down and night began to fall
Saw the buzzards dive and call
Heard the seagulls flock and screech
And there’s things that you ain’t never gonna know
It don’t matter now how rough or smooth the surface of the road
There’s ways that you can learn how to ride
But some answers they just hide
Some answers they just hide
Well you can sit for days inside your haze
And wait for truth to flow
It might come fast it might come slow
It might never come again and you don’t know
That’s how it is
You just don’t know
When I came home it all looked changed
The atmosphere was clear
Time can make things disappear
Or it can make life one big test
In the end we all say what we want to say
It might or might not make you stay
Who knows if something’s a sin anyway
Until they ask you to confess
And there’s things that you ain’t never gonna know
It don’t matter now how rough or smooth the surface of the road
There’s ways that you can learn how to ride
But some answers they just hide
Some answers they just hide