I'm A One Man Guy In The Morning


It's strange how music that you listen to for decades can suddenly acquire meaning, no longer ear candy, but strangely biographical. I've watched Loudon Wainwright perform this song in the Village at The Bottom Line before it was closed by NYU. I have seen him perform it at the Woodland Park Zoo during an early 90s Zootunes, where he walked through a narrow field playing his guitar, like some sort of magical music video.  (Rufus Wainwright covered this, and flips the meaning entirely and makes it his own, unsurprising given his beautiful and at times languorous tenor voice).

It never crossed my mind before Jenny was diagnosed that I would be a widower. So, this song was just a fun play on words for me, Loudon making fun of himself for being a narcissist and for being alone and how selfish that can be. The song now comes at me as if, when I listened to it before, I was listening to someone speaking in tongues. It wasn't nonsense  blather, just devoid of any meaning that I could apply to my life. Now, I feel like it fits me like a 12 page letter in a single envelope. It's a bit too snug.

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