Dead Shark Songs

Yes, I’ve been more interested in the political lately, but can you blame me?  Things are interesting right now, by which I mean, of course, that the liberals are on the ropes.  It’s always fascinating to watch an administration go down the drain.  That’s not yet the case for the Obama administration but if it continues on it’s current path I have no doubt that’s where it’s headed.  Remember the series PBS did many years back on JFK, LBJ, Nixon, Carter, and Reagan?  Three hours per episode if I recall.  The episode on LBJ was, to me, the best one.  LBJ had the world on a string, liberalism was at it apex, and Congress was dominated by the Democratic Party The Great Society was upon us and LBJ was it’s leader and architect.  And it all came crashing down due to Vietnam and the excesses of liberalism.  The man who was elected in one of the largest landslides in history dropped his reelection bid four years later because he almost assuredly could not even gain his own party’s nomination.  Near the end of the episode they show a still photo of Johnson in the Oval Office, his face buried in his hands, a man bewildered. The moment was downright Shakespearean in its dramatic force, King Lear-like.  They rerun this series on occasion.  If you’ve never seen these shows, I highly recommend them.  Who knows, in about four years they may be updating the series to include Barack Obama.

But this post is to assure you that I still have things to say on subjects other than politics.

A relationship, I think, is like a shark. You know? It has to constantly move forward or it dies. And I think what we got on our hands is a dead shark – Alvy Singer, from the movie Annie Hall.

I thought of that scene this week while I was working out.  Woody Allen and Diane Keaton are on a plane back to New York from Los Angeles, a place she likes and he despises (Annie: It's so clean out here. Alvy: That's because they don't throw their garbage away, they turn it into television shows.)  Both are lost in thought and they come to the simultaneous realization that they’ve come to the end of their relationship.  It was great once but not any longer.  Allen sums up the problem with the “dead shark” quote.

What prompted my recollection of the scene during my workout were the songs I was listening to.  These days I’m more likely to listen to Beethoven or Sinatra or Pops than to pop-rock standards but I do still have a fondness for those standards from the early-to-mid 1970’s.  I’ve got a playlist of songs from that era and I shuffled it.  At one point during a span of five songs I realized there were three dead-shark songs in there, all three classics, and all three with the same subject, relationships that are coming to an end: Carole King’s “It’s Too Late”, Gladys Knight’s “Neither One Of Us”, and Jackson Browne’s “Late For The Sky”.  I’ve been listening to all three songs on a regular basis for about thirty-five years now but it was only when hearing them in such close proximity the other day that I made the connection.  They’re all dead sharks. 

From “It’s Too Late”:

Stayed in bed all morning just to pass the time 

There’s something wrong here, there can be no denying…

It used to be so easy living here with you

You were light and breezy and I knew just what to do

Now you look so unhappy

And I feel like a fool…

They’ll be good times again for me and you

But we just can’t stay together, don’t you feel it too?

From “Neither One Of Us”:

It’s sad to think

we’re not going to make it

And it’s gotten to the point

Where we just can’t fake it

For some ungodly reason

We just won’t let it die

I guess neither one of us

Wants to be the first to say goodbye

From “Late For The Sky”:

Well the words had all been spoken

And somehow the feeling still wasn’t right

And still we continued on through the night…

Looking hard into your eyes

There was nobody I’d ever known

Such an empty surprise

To feel so alone…

I’m awake again I can’t pretend

And I know I’m alone

And close to the end

Of the feeling we’ve known.

They are all wonderful, beautifully-crafted songs, from the gorgeous first chord of “It’s Too Late”, to Gladys Knight’s high-pitched “ooh” during the final chorus of  “Neither One Of Us”, to the way Jackson Browne sings the words “and I know I’m alone” just past the 4 minutes mark of “Late For The Sky”, like he’s just realized the enormous and devastating truth of those words.

At any rate, here’s hoping your shark is still swimming – mine is.  I wanted to embed all three songs but I don't have "Late For The Sky" available. But here are the other two. Listen and enjoy: