February 13 - Song for John Davis

Grumble of tape recorder, opening bright chord, historical lyrics, this is peak early Mountain Goats.

John's love of history, especially of the small personal lives of people in remarkable historical situations, is one of his most assured strengths. I've always had a love of the personal in history, the central and so hard to grasp concept that the people then were the people now, just with a different set of experiences and upbringings. The social history recorded by people like Dr Eleanor Janega is and always will be more fascinating to me than the purportedly more significant activities of people in positions of power. How people lived is has so much in it in a way that how people ruled does not.

The brief diversion in this song into 1 Corinthians set me off on the path it always does. I don't believe in putting away childish things. While I am no longer who I was as a child, the tools that childhood gave me (curiosity, wonder, necessary fear, hard won hope) are the most reliable I have. If you put away childish things you stop playing. And if you stop playing you stop living.