Thanksgiving – Whatcha Gonna Do?

I listened last week to a version of a Bob Dylan song recorded recently by Tim Easton and the McCrary Sisters to raise awareness and support for the Nashville Rescue Mission, a homeless shelter and addiction recovery centre. The song is Whatcha Gonna Do and this is a really fine new version.

Being a bit of  Dylan fan, I’d heard the song before (on The Bootleg Series Volume 9: The Witmark Demos), but had rather forgotten it. It’s a version of an old spiritual, which asks the sobering question “Oh my Lord, what shall I do…when death comes a-creeping in the room.” Something I guess most of us would prefer not to think about too closely.

I then stumbled upon an excellent post by Sean Curnyn in The Cinch Review from 2014, who points out that Dylan has recorded several versions of the song. The one covered by Tim Easton was in fact the Witmark Demo version, the latest of three versions. Curnyn goes through the lyrical changes in each Dylan version, and prefers the version where the questions posed by each verse of the song are as follows:

First verse: Tell me what you’re gonna do when death comes creepin’ in your door

Second verse: Tell me what you’re gonna do when the devil calls your cards

Third verse: Tell me what you’re gonna do when the shadow comes into your room

Fourth verse: Tell me what you’re gonna do when your water turns to wine

Previously Dylan had had the 4^th verse question as Tell me what you’re gonna do when death comes knockin’ on your door.

This he finds interesting because there is a deliberate change here from contemplating the disasters of life – death, misfortune and evil, the “shadow.” Whether we like it or not, we all, sooner or later, have to face the shadow, or “the devil” (be it the consequences of our own foolish actions or, ill-treatment by others) and, last of all, death, of those we care about and, inevitably, our own. The ancient wisdom writers of Israel thought carefully about these sort of questions, when they wrote about “walking through the valley of the shadow of death,” and wondered where to go “in the day of trouble.” Their conclusion was that the only safe refuge was in “the Lord.”

Important as these questions are, Dylan takes us a step further when he asks “what you’re gonna do when your water turns to wine?” recalling, probably very deliberately, the wedding at Cana where Jesus turned the water into wine. What happens when something good happens, when something turns out, perhaps surprisingly, to be a blessing, when you encounter a moment of grace, when, perhaps, it seems like a miracle? How do we respond? Do we take it for granted? Do we enjoy the moment and then rush on to whatever’s next? Do we think it’s our right?

Or do we pause and be thankful? Gratitude is a powerful thing. Research shows that choosing to focus on good things makes you feel better than focusing on bad things, and that choosing gratitude can also bring out the best in those around us. It doesn’t just happen, however – we need to cultivate “interior gratitude,” the practice of giving thanks privately, and along with that, “exterior gratitude,” publically expressing our gratitude.  Someone has suggested writing two short emails each morning to friends, family or colleagues, thanking them for what they do – I’m gonna give that one a try.

It’s said that truly happy people find ways to give thanks for the little, insignificant things that happen in life – in this thanksgiving week, Dylan’s question is pertinent: asks “what you’re gonna do when your water turns to wine?”

Whatcha gonna do?

Paris

Our thoughts and prayers are with all those whose loved ones were killed or injured in last night’s atrocity in Paris.

“And the light shines in the darkness and the darkness is not able to overcome it”

 

 The sky was gray when I woke up this morning
Seems to me that nothin’ was the same
My situation changed without a warning
Terry Callier

Prescription Blues

I listened to a great version of a song recorded in 1924 by Clara Smith called Prescription for the Blues recently on the Watkins Family Hour album. It struck a chord, having suffered some ill health recently myself – doctor’s prescriptions have been all too frequently part of life of late!

Of course the song isn’t really about treating physical health – it’s about the blues, what Robert Johnson called “an achin’ old heart disease,” the “worried blues.” W.C. Handy said that the “blues were conceived in aching hearts.” Prescription Blues is a clever, light-hearted, playful little song about being love sick, having a “heart disease” and asking the doctor  for a cure:

All day long I worry all night I’m blue
I feel so awfully lonesome I don’t know what to do
And so I ask you doctor to see if you can find
Something in your sachet to pacify my mind
Oh doctor doctor write me a prescription for the blues

Let me tell you doctor why I’m in misery
Once I had a lover, but she went away from me
…Oh doctor doctor write me a prescription for the blues

And that’s what most of the blues are about, isn’t it – lost love, love gone wrong, unfaithful lovers, unrequited love, yearning and heart break. As Son House said, “Ain’t but one kind of blues – and that consisted in male and female that’s in love.”

Well, for sure that’s mainly the subject matter of most blues songs. But there’s more to it than that, and I think this is why the blues continue to resonate for us. The blues arose in black communities a century ago, in the hardship, toil, injustice and bondage of African Americans. B. B. King said, “The blues is an expression of anger against shame and humiliation.” And, as well as love, many of the songs address real life problems – not having enough money, illness, homelessness, bereavement, abandonment. You can easily think of songs like Victoria Spivey’s T.B. Blues (“I got a tuberculosis; consumption is killing me, It’s too late, too late…too late”), about a disease that is particularly associated with poverty, or Blind Lemon Jefferson’s Broke and Hungry, or Big Bill Broonzy’s Starvation Blues, where he sings about having no job, no place to stay and “starvation everywhere I go.”

Well, of course, there is a prescription for all this – we don’t have to tolerate injustice, racism, exploitation. They are all problems that can be addressed, if we have the will. The blues can keep on jolting us out of our safe, comfortable lives and alert us to the pain and ills of the world around. Will we be part of the problem or part of the solution? Which starts with the words of someone from a couple of thousand years ago: “do unto others as you’d have them do unto you.”