Hey James,<\/p>\n\n\n\n
John Prine died this week. I won\u2019t claim that it shook me to my core, or that I broke down when I heard the news. It was more like the moment immediately after you get a bad papercut, when you feel some small painful thing, but you know the blood will start to flow soon, and you\u2019d better treat it quickly.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I treated it with a vodka and ginger ale, as it seemed appropriate, and by listening to Fair & Square<\/em>. Dad gave me that album years ago and it always reminds me of him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Do you remember that time he sat us down and made us listen to \u201cSome Humans Ain\u2019t Human\u201d? He thought its criticism of George W. Bush and the general meanness of others was powerful. It didn\u2019t mean much to me. It\u2019s hard to get someone else to feel a song\u2019s effects that it has on you, especially when you\u2019re right in front of them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But after I had the chance to play the album on my own for the first time, some day years later when I was cleaning my room, I did feel something. \u201cGlory of True Love\u201d had a buoyancy and lightness that perked me up; \u201cLong Monday\u201d felt like a preview of adulthood. But it was his version of \u201cClay Pigeons\u201d that floored me, made me sit down and weep. It\u2019s so damn melancholy, but I hear some hope in it too. And when I hear that song now, I think of dad.<\/p>\n\n\n\n -Paul<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Hey James, John Prine died this week. I won\u2019t claim that it shook me to my core, or that I broke down when I heard the news. It was more like the moment immediately after you get a bad papercut, when you feel some small painful thing, but you know the blood will start to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-132","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-hey","category-paul"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinpoints.community\/hey\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinpoints.community\/hey\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinpoints.community\/hey\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinpoints.community\/hey\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinpoints.community\/hey\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=132"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/pinpoints.community\/hey\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133,"href":"https:\/\/pinpoints.community\/hey\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/132\/revisions\/133"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/pinpoints.community\/hey\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=132"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinpoints.community\/hey\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=132"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/pinpoints.community\/hey\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=132"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}