Someone once told me I would have been Donovan if I had been born twenty or so years earlier than I was. I'm not really sure if that was a compliment. I certainly enjoy the insanity if Atlantis and much of Donovan's work, and I've tended to find myself relating to it. This little gem of a tune has always been a favorite of mine. It speaks to me in words that fit in with those I had written in the days when I was writing lyrics for disturbed bands in Tucson back some twenty years ago.
The days of wine and roses are distant days for me
I dream of the last and the next affair and of little girls
I’ll never see
These days I often find myself pulling the song out of mothballs and playing it as a memory and yet it is more like me now than it was then. I feel retired. I feel like I spent two decades giving all I could and yet there is more I have and it is better now than it was. The focus seems to be missing. I am a better teacher than I am at actually doing. Those who can no longer do find themselves as teachers. I never wanted to be a teacher. I wanted to be the one who rode over the horizon with his sword raised high.
And here I sit the retired writer in the sun
The retired writer in the sun, and I’m
Blue, the retired writer in the sun
Too much reflection and not enough of the now. A lot of water has flowed under my bridge. A lot. I mean, a lot. I've seen things most people would never believe. I've seen too much. I've sailed many oceans and tasted many shores. I embraced it and I rejected it. Later I regretted both, but I regret no longer. I feel too much and sometimes the words betray me. I have a lot to say, but the pen is very tired and the hand doesn't do what it used to do.
Tonight I trod in starlight. I excuse myself with a grin
I ponder the moon in a silver spoon and the little one alive
within.
Writing is like my heroin now instead of my gift. I don't do what I once did. I don't have the inspiration and I don't have the wings. I could fly on the words at one time but now they bog me down. They must be spoken. They are no longer a song. They are the cry of the dying within. There are no ideals. There is only survival. There is the need to remember who I once was and who I was supposed to be. There are words. They still come.
And here I sit the retired writer in the sun
The retired writer in the sun, and I’m
Blue, the retired writer in the sun
I bother the little girls. It is what I do. I give them something and then I take it away. What I feel I can deliver I can never really give completely. There are only words. So many I have loved and so many I continue to love, whether as living beings or as memories of what could have been and was maybe meant to be. The sign on the road ahead says never turn back. I look to the future, but it is difficult to remember.
The magazine girl poses on my glossy paper aeroplane
Too many years I spent in the city playing with Mister Loss
and Gain.
Decadence. There was plenty. It reached up and smacked me in the face sometimes. I felt myself eroding. The strength I once had fades from me and new strengths rise to take their place. The clock ticks and I ignore its ongoing message. I can only push forward. There are things I know I am capable of doing and yet they elude me because I cannot commit myself to them. I need the peace that comes with riding the safe harbors. The waves seem too difficult to ride these days.
And here I sit the retired writer in the sun
The retired writer in the sun, and I’m
Blue, the retired writer in the sun
I could have done it once, but I quit. I backed away from potential and I turned down opportunity. There was a time when I was too arrogant for success and it cost me dearly. Now, I want to enjoy the ride, but hard work and dedication become foreign concepts. I can play any card but I can't up the ante. Loss is not something I want to risk right now, and in doing so I abandon my own standards of success.
I bathe in the sun of the morning, lemon circles swim in the tea
Fishing for time with a wishing line and throwing it back in
the sea.
I remember the reservoir and I remember her smile. I thought she would help me and guide me and steady me. She needed the same from me. We gave up on each other in too many ways and gave up on ourselves. The world would have been ours because we were too powerful together to be denied. I lament too many missed crossings. I didn't build enough bridges. The water was too cold. The water was too deep. I gave up but I keep trying to get it back again. Someday I will, but it won't be tomorrow.
And here I sit the retired writer in the sun
The retired writer in the sun, and I’m
Blue, the retired writer in the sun
Lyrics copyright by Donovan Leitch