This is perhaps my favorite song by the artist mostly known as Dan Bern but also sometimes Bernstein. I like it so much that I had been on E2 for less than a week before I noded its lyrics (see below). Suffice to say it deserves a more thorough explication, but for now I will simply say that this song encapsulates many of my favorite Bern/stein themes --- art, love, and the little things that make both of those and life itself worthwhile --- and (at least on the Dan Bern album, on which this is the penultimate track, Number 10) performed in a classically Dan style: one guy, one guitar, part spoken, part sung, all completely fuckin' genius. The line "...sounds like a cliché unless it's happened to you" was part of my email .signature for quite some time, and now I'm just sort of rambling so I'll shut up and listen to the song again (and again, and again) while I try to figure out what else it is I want to write about it. (10 May 2012)

I was painting a still life this morning
Of a throat lozenge sitting on a copy of Tropic of Cancer
The only thing weird about it is that a year ago, I never thought I'd paint anything again
I decided I wasn't ever gonna paint again
It didn't bother me too much
Warhol's dead, David Hockney's still alive
I don't need to paint

I painted over ten thousand paintings
Sad ones, funny ones, dark ones, and light ones
I've done haystacks and rich old ladies by their pools,
Wearing nothing but a scarf
I painted everything there was to paint
Now it was time to sit back
Give interviews, get on the internet
Hang out at Club Med, take stock of what I've done

You know, the best friend I ever had was a dog
It sounds like a cliché unless it's happened to you
Some days that dog was the only reason I even got out of bed
That dog went everywhere with me
Then I heard that crack addicts were stealin' dogs and selling them for animal research
It sounded like an urban myth to me, like the mouse in the Coke bottle
But I started leavin' her at home after that.

You know, Paula was my wife for a while
She ran off to Paris with the great-grandson of Van Gogh
A cartoonist who did fashion graphics for Le Monde
When Paula left she took my dog
I never saw her again except in court during the custody battle
She won and got to keep the dog
and I didn't speak to anyone for months

You know sometimes it feels like there's so much that you need
Sometimes the world is upside down
Sometimes it seems like the only thing you need
Is holdin' someone's hand as you walk through town

I started hanging around with Dino
He used to run a poker game back East, now he has a little coffee shop,
Sells cappuccino to his old pals,
Tommy Chicago and Jimmy the Wig and the Ugly Rose

You know the best person I ever knew was a Mormon woman named Estelle
She still calls me drunk every few months, asks me stuff I don't want to talk about
You can't talk to her very long unless you're drunk yourself—then we go all night.

She says, "Why baby, why baby, why baby, why have you turned your back on love?
You had so many chances, why've you let 'em all go by?"

Well, one morning I was sitting in front of Dino's place
With Jake the Shears, a guy from Philly who gives free mohawks
There were a couple of young painters I was hopin' would come by so I could give 'em some advice
Yeah, I was sittin' there updating my list of enemies
When this girl walks in and the universe kind of stops
Turned out she drank the same tea as me
Doesn't take more than that to start a conversation sometimes
She believed collage was the greatest of all the arts
And was busy pasting pictures of horses next to ads for laundry soap next to Mohammed Ali
She had a turquoise in her ear and said Rachmaninoff was always in her head

Later that day I was trying to describe her to Jimmy the Wig
I couldn't find any words and I realized I'd started to sketch her chin
Somehow it didn't look right
I scratched it out and tried it again
I filled an entire pad
I threw it away, I never even came close

For six days I sat at Dino's place
The rain wouldn't quit and no one came in
Finally on the seventh day it cleared and in she walked
I asked her to sit with me, and I bought her a cup of tea
And I asked her to model for me sometime
That afternoon I was at a canvas
She was wearing a yellow dress
I swore if she let me, I'd get it right

I've painted over ten thousand paintings
Sad ones, funny ones, dark ones, and light ones
But sitting there, it was like I couldn't even write my own name
I apologized and said, "It's been a few months
If you have patience, I'll get the hang of it again"
In the next few weeks, I painted her hundreds of times
If I get the nose right, the chin's too long
If I get 'em both right, the face is too thin
But I keep after it and one day I'll get it all right

I painted a still life this morning
Of a throat lozenge sitting on a copy of Tropic of Cancer
The only thing that's funny is I never thought I'd paint anything again
I think I might go visit Estelle
Those Utah mountains are good for the soul
I'll bring my brushes and some Jack Daniels
And we can make up for lost time

She said, "Why baby, why baby, why baby why have you turned your back on love?
You had so many chances, why do you let 'em all go by?

Why baby, why baby, why baby why have you turned your back on love?
You had so many chances, why do you let 'em all go by?"

Sometimes it seems like there's so much that you need
Sometimes the world is upside down
Sometimes it seems like the only thing you need
Is holdin' someone's hand as you walk through town

—Dan Bern

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