“This song has two of my favorite ingredients for a song–doom and gratitude.” Jackson Browne introduces Warren Zevon’s “Don’t Let Us Get Sick,” after “Lawyers, Guns, and Money,” also by Zevon. He sees these as two “polar opposite” Zevon songs, and says he likes to play them back to back. The crowd has been screaming for their own favorites, including multiple pleas to “Play Warren Zevon!!!” Browne is generous and flexible with his set list, his fans over the decades having become accustomed to him taking at least some requests. This is the second time I have had the pleasure of seeing him perform at Memphis, TN’s historic and beautiful Orpheum Theater. Judging by the ages of the people in the crowd, many are asking for the songs from their own youths, in the late 1960’s and 70’s. Some of them sound like they would rather he pretend he never wrote another song after about 1985. There’s an element of possessiveness, entitlement in some of the requests. They seem to say “Play MY song, the way I want to hear it.” The way that would make them feel 20 again? Are these the ones who traded in their tired wings, or who believe not in true love, but in those things that money can buy? It kind of seems like it.

He does a wonderful job of balancing his need and desire as an artist to share his body of work, with kindness toward a nostalgic, demanding, and loving audience. During intermission, I overhear, “He’s playing all new stuff! WHY???” And after the show, “I really wish he would have rocked a little harder.” I almost feel like those people went to a different show. This was a small setup–Jackson, two backup singers, a lead/slide guitar player. The performance that was actually happening on the stage was enthralling for me. This is an intimate songwriter intentionally creating a very personal, immersive concert experience, and I am here for that all day every day. My friends–all of us among the youngest in attendance–loved it as much as I did.

I first became a Jackson Browne fan around the age of 15 or 16. My English teacher (now one of my yoga students!) gave us an assignment to bring a poem to class to read aloud. At the time, all the poetry we were exposed to at school was of historical/literary “value.” I really liked poetry, and wrote plenty, but I don’t know that I had read much, if any, by living poets at that point in time. I don’t know why, but I had in my head that I wanted to read a living poet, and I didn’t have any kind of plan for how to identify, narrow down, choose. Luckily, I lived in a musical household, where there were plenty of song books. I don’t know what I had already thumbed through when I picked up “Jackson Browne: 21 Songs For Guitar and Piano.” This really is poetry, I thought as I looked through various lyrics, many from his “Late For The Sky” album. Maybe technically all songs are poetry, but not like this. Jackson Browne is fundamentally a poet whose medium is song, I think because music has a more powerful depth and reach than the words alone on the page. With songs, the artist gets to be with the audience for the art, to connect in a way I think he needs, that print-only publication would cut off. I still love “Farther On,” the song I chose for my assignment, that led me to “Late For The Sky,” and one of my favorite musical artists of all time. Here is gratitude.

That song book, and various Jackson Browne albums were in the house in the first place because my father was a fan. He was pretty excited that I had independently come to this interest, listening and poring over lyrics. It can be hard for teenage girls and their fathers to find common ground, for a lot of reasons. We found it in this music, shared what different lyrics meant to us, and knew each other a little bit better because of it. I went away to school for the last two years of high school, and met a guy who really (REALLY) knew how to play the piano and sing. And he understood Jackson Browne, he knew the songs, would play and we would sing together. To this day, he is one of my dearest and most cherished friends, and we still play the songs. We played them with both of our families. When I was 18, my parents and their friends had tickets to see Jackson Browne at the Orpheum, and I was going too. One of their friends backed out. Did my friend want to drive up from South Mississippi and see the show? YES. This was the first phone call I ever received on a cell phone. We all went together, and it is one of my favorite memories. It was just Jackson, in a black t-shirt and jeans, with a bunch of guitars and a keyboard. He might have played three songs before he opened it up to the crowd, kind and full of humor. “Oh I was gonna play another song about death, but yeah let’s do that one.” He played “A Song For Adam.” And I heard “Sky Blue And Black” for the first time, and bought the CD as soon as I could get my hands on it. He was still growing, still so open and feeling. You didn’t have to go backward in his career to get to his best work because it’s such high quality, ongoing. Here is gratitude.

Dad would almost certainly have joined us at the show last night (his older brother, my uncle was in the audience), but going on ten years ago, a lifetime of untreated/unacknowledged depression and anxiety caused him to take his own life. It was really hard when that happened, for all the reasons, and also because for a few years there–on top of everything else–it took the songs away too. I couldn’t bear to listen, and for even longer, I couldn’t bear to sing them. Knowing my own relationship to this music, and the way a different song will stand out, or how a lyric can transform as life transforms, it still hurts to wonder what Dad would have heard, to feel the empty space where his experience and reflection should be. Here is doom.

I have the most years with “Late For The Sky,” because it came to me first and because it is so resonant with the dissonance that is the late-teens/early 20’s life experience. I love rockin’ Jackson of “Somebody’s Baby” and “Runnin’ On Empty,” and his work with The Eagles (who should thank him daily for his songwriting on the “Desperado” album which I like primarily because of his capable storytelling), but my favorite Jackson by miles is the poet who doesn’t need a drum kit. Last night, he played one of the family favorites, “For A Dancer.” It’s one of the songs about death, but it is one of the most life-affirming songs I know. Yes, there is doom. “In the end there is one dance you’ll do alone.” My Mom finds this a limited perspective–perhaps due to Browne’s youth when he wrote it. And she’s right. We are in many ways alone, especially in tragedy when our internal experience can very fully separate us from a room full of people. We do a lot of dances alone. But in the same song, “Go on and make a joyful sound/ Into a dancer you have grown/ From a seed somebody else has thrown/ Go on ahead and throw some seeds of your own.” Put yourself out there. “And somewhere between the time you arrive/ And the time you go/ May lie a reason you were alive/ But you’ll never know.” I have come to read this lyric as referring to freedom. Do your dance. You’re not supposed to know the reasons or to have a destination in mind. In the words of Pina Bausch, “Dance, dance–otherwise, we are lost.” Here is gratitude.

Recently, my original Jackson Browne friend has been going through some very trying times in his family. I adore his family, and have been affected by these circumstances, wishing I could lift the burden or make it better. He told me he had found himself drawn more to “The Pretender,” an album I had not paid much attention to in full, although I love the title song (as did many of the people in the audience last night, and Jackson kindly obliged them and played it beautifully for us). It turns out that album was written through deep pain and loss, and I think it takes the transforming experience of loss to open up some of the doors to those songs. He has been playing “Only Child” (Take good care of your mother) on a loop. I am fixed on “The Fuse.” I listened to “The Pretender” in full several times before a very special, though difficult visit with my friends in South Mississippi. Later, as I was driving with the album playing “Linda Paloma” (which I used to always skip), a group of birds crossing the sky over the road danced through a small version of a murmuration, perfectly in time with the guitar’s phrases. It was like hearing the song for the first time all of a sudden, all beauty for beauty’s sake. These songs are due to transform yet again, as this dear family’s pain and perseverance continue, and eventually transform as well. Here are doom and gratitude bound up together.

Last night, the most confounding thing to me was the number of women screaming to hear “Rosie.” He really wasn’t going to play it, but the level of insistence was pretty severe. I had to wonder whether they think the song is actually about a girl named Rosie, or if they get the euphemism. Since people still think Sprinsteen’s “Born In The USA” is a straightforward, patriotic song, and it’s a lot less subtle, I have to assume there are people who don’t realize that “Rosie” is about going home alone and masturbating. It’s unfortunate, because it’s actually a story about a man being cool with himself and responding appropriately to rejection. The girl he gets into the show goes home with the drummer instead, and he goes to bed with “Rosie Palm and the blister sisters,” among other names. “When you turn out the light, I gotta hand it to me.” The man is FUNNY, which one would have to be to survive his level of insight. Were these women signaling to their husbands that they were on their own for the night? Were they a bunch of Southern protestant/evangelicals who feel naughty rocking out to it? Is it a thrill to think about a young Jackson Browne on the rock ‘n’ road album (“Runnin’ On Empty”) getting personal with himself? Or do they hear “You wear my ring,” and assume it’s marriage and commitment, and a man who really *wants* his gal? I am fascinated and amused. I feel like missing the point of that song means they must miss a lot more, and that seems like doom. Maybe I don’t know much.

It’s always interesting to me to think of Jackson Browne fans in this area of the country, given his politics, which he has been so open about for so long. (Sidenote: If you dislike his politics, you would really hate mine.) I was moved and grateful that, in a Deep South venue, inamongst the rock and the requests, he said, “I want to play this song because I want to thank everyone who’s out there organizing and protesting for common sense gun legislation. No one is trying to take your guns.” He said a little more, before he played “The Long Way Around,” but the people behind me were apparently hard of hearing and filled my ears with their confusion. “He said a common gun registration.” Lord, what were they hearing in the songs? “The seeds of tragedy are there/ And what we feel we have the right to bear/ And watch our children come to harm there/ In the safety of our arms.” (Me: swooning, clapping wildly; Nearby: confusion, they can’t tell if they should be mad). He also played “The Dreamer,” and commented so simply and sweetly about the people who immigrate to this country. The song includes some delightful lyrics in Spanish, and the backup singers were super into it (and were amazing in every word they sang). Here is gratitude.

At the end of the show, as the audience screamed for “The Load Out/Stay,” which I had heard him play at my first show, he either felt he had indulged them enough with “Rosie” and “Take It Easy,” or he was feeling defiant about their less than eager acceptance of the newer material. To the audience’s credit, as much as they wanted THEIR songs, they generally were very very appreciative of him, and everyone was on their feet. “There’s a song I really want to play.” Play what YOU want to play! He probably didn’t hear me holler that, but I did, even if it just dampened the intensity in my section. And he did my actual favorite of his new material, which I share below.

We are doomed. The Deluge is practically here, in the most literal sense. And Jackson Browne is still writing and performing new, personal, important, critical, hopeful, and impactful music. I could go on for days and days about what this or that song or phrase means to me, or the moments I have spent in them. Instead, with love through most of my life, and the deepest gratitude for his work over his life that has been and his life to come, I leave you with last night’s parting song. “The river will open for the righteous, someday.”

I breathe.