Further On Up The Road



Christmas Day 2009, 1:00 AM

It's been awhile since I've written one of these personal blog entries, but the holidays always seem to be a time for personal reflection. So here goes.

As bad as the "double zeroes" have been as a decade (what exactly do we call this decade anyway?), I find myself feeling this weird sense of optimism that I can't really explain. This past year has been particularly rough. In about two weeks, I will mark the occasion of my first full year among the unemployed. To say I'm not used to this would be an understatement.

I've never been rich, but this year I've never been more broke. And doing the annual Christmas thing with my parents, without being able to buy any presents to speak of for the first time in my adult life was a particularly odd experience. As much as my parents have helped me this year, that was definitely tough.

One of the stranger things I've noticed about these past few years though, is the way that old, and quite significant faces from my past have resurfaced. Nasty Nes. Huey Suguira. Mike Levy. Pat Koory. Kim Murrell. To most of you reading these names will be meaningless, but to me each and every one of them had everything to do with who I eventually became...for better or for worse. And they have all come out of the woodwork these past few years -- these are in many cases, people who shaped my life that I fully never expected to hear from again. Since I got on Facebook a few weeks ago, this has only increased.



And that's what reminded me of Johnny Cash's brilliant re-interpretation of the Bruce Springsteen song "Further On Up The Road," from his final album American V: A Hundred Highways. Cash recorded this only months before he went to meet his maker, and in it you can hear both the resignation, but also the eerie peace in his voice of knowing that a life the likes of which few of us have ever lived was nearing its end. It's one of the very few cases where someone covering a Springsteen song did a better version of it than the man itself, and it comes from one of the best records I've heard in the past ten years.

Further On Up The Road indeed...

Not many of us have lived, or will ever live, the life that Johnny Cash did. But there is still comfort in knowing that in however seemingly insignificant ways we did it, we somehow still managed to touch peoples lives along the way. Just as they touched our own.



I have no idea what 2010 is going to bring. There are some hopeful signs, including a potential book deal to write about another of my all-time favorite artists, Neil Young. Whatever happens -- and book deal or not, hopefully it includes a meaningful source of income -- I feel a whole lot better in knowing that whatever it may be, I've got this whole army of friends and family who apparently were always there even if I didn't always realize it.

I'll be seeing you guys further on up on the road.

Merry Christmas everybody.