Flying Burrito Brothers, "Hot Burrito # 1, #2"

In 1973, a year after CCR disbanded and Lou Reed released "Walk On the Wild Side," Gram Parsons died in a resort town in the California desert. In fact, it's been thirty years since his death, and he has become a bonafide legend in certain circles, a lost prophet of American roots music gone far, far too soon. And the Eagles skullfucked his corpse in order to obtain their mastery over the country-rock format that he pioneered.

Kidding, though I always used to say that to a buddy of mine who happened to be a huge Eagles fan, as a way of being an ass.

Anyway, Parsons fronted two of the oddest-named bands in the history of popular music, the International Submarine Band and the Flying Burrito Brothers, in between these two briefly joining the premier American folk-rock band the Byrds and changing their musical direction irrevocably. If he hadn't died at the age of twenty-six, of the usual-suspects cause of drug overdose, he'd probably have a long and prolific career. But then he wouldn't be Gram Parsons.

His life, as recorded by Ben Fong-Torres, could've been a country song (and while there have been other books about Parsons, I would stick with Fong-Torres' tome). His biological father died when he was young, and his mother committed suicide. Parsons went to Harvard but dropped out to become a travelling musician, playing the country music of his native South (born in Florida but raised in Georgia) with an inverted rock twist. At the height of psychedelic rock (the inspiration for so many band names far more bizarre than even ISB or FBB), Parsons struck out on a different path, a path that would leave him gone before he could see how far and wide his inspiration went. You can't have Wilco without Gram Parsons to show the way.

Parsons and the country-fied Byrds were not alone in 1968, when Sweethearts Of the Rodeo (his sole album with the group) came out; the Band came out of hibernation with Dylan to release their own take on roots music, and Bob Dylan himself unplugged and embraced country sounds. It's not hard to understand why country rock took off like it did: the excess of a lot of Sixties music (basically anything that you hear in a movie today to make you think "oh, it must be the Sixties!") began to wear on its target audience as the world around them became much scarier. In 1968, you had the Tet Offensive in Vietnam, the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, the Chicago Convention riots, and the election of Tricky Dick and his gang of crooks to the highest office in the land. Who wants to hear guitar feedback from the Exploding Chocolate Watchband Fruitgum Mothers of Dynamic Tensions and Inventions, fronted by Jeff Beck?

Country rock, of course, is now "alt country," and more power to you if you like it; I've dipped my toe in a couple of times, but apart from Wilco I think I'm good. Mainstream country music never embraced Gram Parsons the way that alt country did; they went for the slick Eagles-style commercial sound in the early Nineties and never looked back. The absolute nadir of this is, of course, Florida-Georgia Line's "Cruise." I doubt that Parsons would look too kindly upon this, as it sullies both his birthplace and home state in the band name alone.

Let's talk about band names for a minute: I can't remember why exactly Parsons and former Byrd Chris Hillman settled on "Flying Burrito Brothers" as a band name, but damned if it doesn't stick in your memory after you've heard it (and possibly makes you crave some Mexican food). Parsons made two albums with the group (one more than he made with the Byrds or the International Submarine Band) before striking out on a solo career that included the discovery of songbird Emmylou Harris as his duet partner. Those two albums, The Gilded Palace of Sin and Burrito Deluxe, are must-haves. The early Seventies were both the best and worst time for music in a lot of ways: with the Beatles split up, the stage was clear for someone to take up the mantle of rock god (it is only to ourselves that blame must fall for KISS claiming that title). Everyone who heard the Band's debut did their own country-rock version of it (Elton John named a song after Levon Helm, for pete's sake). And Gram Parsons sent his burritos flying with songs that married traditional country sounds with rock and roll sensibilities. The Rolling Stones owe him a debt, and it's possible that his time in the company of champion drug-taker Keith Richards contributed to Parsons' early demise. But sometimes an artist can reach more people after he's passed; it's unfortunate, but a truism. Van Gogh and Keats had to die before anyone would appreciate them; Jim Morrison and Ian Curtis unintentionally built up cults around their deaths somehow being prefigured in their music. Gram Parsons could've had a much longer career, but then maybe he wouldn't be Gram Parsons.

So seek out The Gilded Palace of Sin and Burrito Deluxe (if you're lucky, you'll come across the one-CD grouping of both albums as a package deal like I did years ago). Before hipsters tried to ruin it, country rock was pretty damn cool, and Gram Parsons was at the head of the pack.

Creedence Clearwater Revival, "Fortunate Son"

If there's one lesson that studying the music groups or artists you love constantly reinforces, it's that sometimes the very people whose art you love can be the biggest dicks in the history of dickdom. For me, with all the Lou Reed tributes cropping up which made mention of Lou's loutish behaviour at times towards journalists (though of course said tributes were pouring in from many of those same journalists), it reminded me of John Fogerty, whom I consider both a talented songwriter (especially with his band Creedence Clearwater Revival) and a huge dick to his former bandmates.

Fogerty led CCR during the late Sixties heyday they enjoyed in the white-hot sulpherous glare of American pop-rock stardom (at a time when Reed and the Velvets couldn't get arrested on the pop charts). Then, first parting with his brother Tom and then with the other two bandmembers (bassist Stu Cook and drummer Doug Clifford), Fogerty embarked on a solo career that so far has yielded "Centerfield" and..."Centerfield 2013"? "Centerfield 2: Electric Boogaloo"? Safe to say, most people know Fogerty today for CCR, which is a pretty good legacy to have if you can get it. But he's a dick.

I know a lot of people love CCR and will take issue with my assertation about his asshole-ness, but trust me, I looked it up on Wikipedia and read the quote there John gave about how he "did everything" in CCR. He's the last person to ever be accused of modesty, and for the fact that he has continuously snubbed his bandmates (Tom died in 1990, and Clifford and Cook aren't on speaking terms with His High and Mighty John Fogerty), I have personally found it hard to enojoy CCR without thinking to myself "man, the guy singing this song is a dick."

Truth be told, of course, if you're a fan of Lou Reed or even the great Bob Dylan (as I am), you really shouldn't be too upset if an artists turns out to be a pain in the ass on a personal level (or comes across that way because rock journalists *say* he's that way). There's always a story or two every month about the ridiculous riders attached to touring artists who demand white doves in their dressing room, or no green M&Ms in the sparkling bidet that every auditorium must provide, or whatnot. Most of the time, these stories are meant to remind you, the viewer at home, that Celebrities Aren't Like Us, and you can take it either as a compliment (see, you're not batshit crazy, stars are!) or an insult (don't you wish you could get away with this?). So please don't mistake me when I say that John Fogerty is a dick, it doesn't mean that he hasn't written some true-blue American anthems about driving trucks and running through jungles and being a fortunate son who don't have to go get his ass shot off in Vietnam. He has written some great, great songs. He's just a bit of a dick.

John Fogerty can get away with this dickishness because, like I said, he wrote some great songs. But listening to CCR this past week, I can see how hollow and empty some of the band's biggest hits are, at least in terms of being "authentic." At a time when the Band was perfecting the sound of roots rock, CCR made it mainstream by bringing back the sound of the Fifties to the charts. But I'm gonna have to go with the Band over CCR if I want "authentic" roots rock. This has nothing to do with CCR's "Southern by way of NoCal" rock sound (plenty of bands have created an allure that has no basis in geographical fact, and CCR were clearly indebted to Faulkner as much as they were to Sun Records in conceiving of a South that exists in their songs, with maybe some early existential Walker Percy thrown in for good measure). CCR were popular, mighty popular, in their heyday, and the golden rule of music is that the greater your popularity the less relevant you are to future generations unless you're "revived" due to nostalgia or hipster irony. CCR is now used to sell Walgreen's. You can't be "revived" if you're used to hawk medical stores.

But no matter how popular they were in their day, CCR gets a bit of a pass because the good songs they did, the really good ones, are classics that can't be sullied too much by being used in ads. In a perfect world, of course, the Velvet Underground or the Stooges or Big Star would've gotten the sort of acclaim and "all-American appeal" that CCR got instead, but c'est la vie. And I like CCR, at least on some level. I remember as a kid, seeing ads for the band's best-of on TV and thinking how cool and "Sixties" they looked. CCR were fabricated, to be sure, and they were sold to a nation gullible enough to think that CCR were "hip, but okay for backyard pool parties in the suburbs," not "child-raping revolutionaries with bombs aimed at the heart of America" (though few songs can match "Fortunate Son" in terms of "go fuck yourself" and anger). I like CCR when I don't have to think about how much of a dick Fogerty was to his former bandmates. But as I get older, it's harder to seperate the two. For the time being, however, crank it up when this song or any of their songs come on the radio. It may have as much to do with the South as Larry the Cable Guy does, but the music of CCR is blessedly, flawed America at its best. Even when it's written by a huge dick.

Fall Housecleaning Edition

No song review/inspiration for rambling personal essay today, I've got some things to talk about that don't really fall into that category so I'm just rambling today.

First things first: I was heartbroken last week when Lou Reed died. I thought about posting my thoughts here, but then I remembered that I owed the website Overthinking It an article after my last idea (comparing Miley Cyrus to J.D. Salinger) didn't pan out in second-draft form. So I sent them this: http://www.overthinkingit.com/2013/10/31/sweet-lou-lou-reed-1942-2013/

Lou Reed was a hero of mine since I heard Joy Division cover "Sister Ray" and sought out the original Velvet Underground version. He lived a full, active and adventurous life, and he will be missed. Kudos to the Georgia PBS station for re-broadcasting the "American Masters" profile of Reed from back in the late Nineties twice this weekend.

Now then; grad school applications do have a deadline, and it is February 1st. I'm now wondering if I can afford the fee for the entrance exam (it was pretty high a few years ago, and that was before the recession). I just sent off my first student-loan payment yesterday, which is kind of a big deal as I delayed it forever because of all the fun times I had financially over the past few years. It felt good to start trying to pay that off, though it too could take a long time to do so.

Finally, I read a very good biography of a very odd writer whose work I've always meant to delve more into but whose reputation for being odd has kept me at arm's length. David Foster Wallace left behind three novels, a couple of collections of short stories and essays, and one very interesting collaboration about rap music (the only work of his I've actually managed to read all the way through). Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story is the first biography about him, and it's really good (even if I can't help but feel sad at how the author seems to portray him. I wonder how people who knew DFW feel about the portrait). I might just have to pick up some of DFW's work and give it another try. I think I got through the first paragraph of Infinite Jest before tossing my hands up in despair that I would never understand it. Sometimes it helps to have context.

Anyway, that's it for now, except that I just remembered how awesome it is to see Boston win another World Series. Do you realize that they have yet to lose a World Series this century? Wicked hard, that is. Wicked hard.

Stevie Wonder, "Tuesday Heartbreak"

Stevie Wonder is amazing. There, blog entry finished...

No, you want me to elaborate? Okay, here goes nothing...when I was a kid in the Eighties, Stevie Wonder was a big deal already. He was the guy behind the song that, in the title alone, captures everything that was at once so right and so wrong about the decade: "I Just Called to Say I Love You." As famously opined in High Fidelity the book and movie, no one could possibly consider that their favorite song. I recall exercising in elementary school to some of his other early-Eighties hits, and of course there he was in the all-star recording of "That's What Friends Are For," the kind of song that makes you kinda glad John Lennon didn't live to see it.

But like the man says in The Dark Knight, either you die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain, or at least "not as good as you once were." It's a sad fact that age-ism is a part of rock music, but it is; the older your favorite artist gets, the less likely he or she or they are to release anything that stands up to whatever put them on top in the first place (or, when they do, get "re-discovered" by an audience that might not have once embraced them, like the late-career resurgence of Johnny Cash). Some of my favorite artists are people whom I consider to have "lost it" at some chronological date in their careers, and whether they regain it or not is hard to say. Miley Cyrus ain't gonna be near as controversial in her seventies as she is in her twenties, I guess it would be fair to say.

But of course, Stevie in the Eighties could afford to slack off, for as I discovered later on he had a boatload of hits in the Sixties and Seventies. Enough really to excuse the treacly sentiment of "I Just Called" and perhaps even enough to point out that, if one chose to view it as such, said song was actually a clever take-down of the kind of sappy songs that Stevie's contemporaries Lionel Richie and Kenny Rogers (among others) were putting out in roughly the same time period. This is the man who gave the world "Signed, Sealed, Delivered," Innervisions, "Higher Ground," "I Was Made to Love Her," and so on and so forth. If he wanted to record an absolute piece of crap and release it on an unsuspecting public, why the hell couldn't he? In this way, you could almost say it was Stevie's Metal Machine Music.

But back to the Seventies, when Motown was in a bit of a culture change and Stevie released the album Talking Book. Marvin Gaye had thrown off the light, poppy sound that made his duets and made him a star, embracing a raw, funky sexuality that was at odds with Berry Gordy's insistance on appealing to the widest (and whitest) possible audience. Stevie was liberated from recording what the label wanted him to do and could now flex his artistic muscle. Talking Book, which has my all-time favorite "spooky song used in John Carpenter's The Thing" ("Superstition"), is loaded with great, great damn songs. But on listening to a mix CD I made a while back and coming across "Tuesday Heartbreak," I have to give it up for that track in particular.

Looking at the title alone, without knowing the song, you'd think "oh, I know what that's about." You'd be wrong. It's a funky, almost celebratory song about heartbreak. It's a joyful ode to the woes of seeing your woman in the arms of another man and the fact being that you can't do a damn thing about it. So just dance, you miserable bastard, dance.

Seriously, though, on an album full of songs that could be standards if they're not already ("I Believe (When I Fall In Love)," "You and I," "Blame It on the Sun"), this is a great, great song. Because when you have had actual honest-to-God heartbreak, you can only do the Joy Division, slashing-my-wrists emo stuff for so long (and believe me, JD and the Cure are perfect for just-broke-up or never-gonna-hear-from-her-again pain). You kinda have to embrace the possibility of change, but you're not blasting James Brown's "I Feel Good" just yet. "Tuesday Heartbreak" is a good reminder that, even when your heart is breaking, the dawn promises a new day. One good thing about getting older is the realization that, for as painful as it can be to get your heart broken, you will eventually learn to love again, and maybe even get it right this time around. But in the meantime, go ahead and shake your ass a little, you deserve it.

R.E.M., "Shiny Happy People"

Everytime I catch The Social Network on FX, I feel a little uneasy about logging into my Facebook account afterwords. If you accept even a fraction of the film as being historically accurate about the founding of the website, you have to acknowledge one uncomfortable truth: Mark Zuckerberg is exactly the kind of obsessive, creepy loner genius who would start an online "community" that is more often about satisfying your ego and gleaning information about people than it is about trying to promote community.

Granted, I've yet to log out of my Facebook account completely in protest over this, but I do take precautionary measures; I leave no mention of where I work on my profile (or here, for that matter), I try to refrain from saying things that I wouldn't say unless it were to a close friend or family member, I don't do the whole "pity party" parade once I've experienced an emotional trauma (often because, getting older and wiser about how a few minutes' satisfaction over calling someone a "bitch" online can lead to long, long periods of painful regret after, I figure it's time to grow up and let that pass). I do all of this and more because I've realized something that a lot of people younger than me (and some older than me) fail to grasp: social media is not your friend.

Twitter and Instagram and the like are often cited as "bringing people together," but often times a Twitter feed (especially that of a celebrity like Donald Trump or Justin Bieber) is often merely a sounding board for the absolute lack of tact or basic intelligence that many such "famous people" seem to lack. Of course, in the good ole days of Hollywood press machines, agents and studios could keep stars from making asses of themselves, and at first you could have made the argument that social media made us more aware of our celebrities' failings. But those are now carefully stage-managed and spin-controlled now, and I honestly have no interest in joining Twitter because if I only needed 140 characters to make my point, I'd be a different person than the long-winded bastard you see here before you.

I'm not saying that all social media is a bad thing, I'm just saying that a lot of it makes me uncomfortable, from the way it sometimes rewards asinine comments to the fact that the "community" it seemingly provides is an illusion. I'm "friends" with people I've never met (granted, most of them are writers or entertainers whose work I admire and who, if they got to really know me offline, might like me too. At least I'd like to think so ;-p). But the flip side to that is that I'm friends with people I know in the real, concrete, non-Matrix-y kind of world (i.e., flesh and blood) whom I otherwise wouldn't have contact with (either because they're far away geographically or because my body odor is repellant to them, one or the other). And sometimes I go months or even years without hearing from them, but every now and then I see a familiar name on my Facebook wall and feel some nostalgia for the times when that person was closer by.

My problem with Facebook is that, often times, it feeds into the general narcissim of this age, when people know Snooki but not any president other than Obama, Reagan, or Palmer off 24. There is a desire to be memorable, to have our lives documented like the celebrities we seem to admire now (and these celebrities don't even have to be talented; just look at the Kardashians, a family so ass-backwards that they released the sex tape *before* they got famous). People spend so much time taking pics with their phone that they then post to social media that they often don't think about what it is that motivates them to do so. I'm as guilty of it as the next person, but still: don't you ever see a bunch of people staring at their phones "documenting" the fact that they're at an event when the event is going on right in front of them and they can't even be bothered to look up from their screens?

Like I said, none of these musings have led me to leave Facebook, though I do watch myself more than I used to (or I try to, anyway). I would like to leave a legacy a little more substantial than a few clever comments on someone's Facebook wall, and I understand the reach for online "immortality" that seems to be Facebook's bread and butter. It's just something that I thought needed to be brought up, maybe in hopes of helping those out there who seem to live via Facebook (and not really live outside of it) realize that it's not healthy but it's not irredeemably bad either. "Shiny Happy People," for the record, has nothing to do with social media, but it's a song that R.E.M. profess to hate but which I'm sure has its own fan club on Facebook. I'm probably not going to join (I like the song, but there are far, far better R.E.M. songs out there), but I wouldn't discourage you from doing so. Just don't miss out on the actual life that's occurring while you're documenting it with your phone or tweeting about it at 140 characters per tweet, is all I ask.

The Faces, "Stay With Me"

In his new book Turn Around Bright Eyes, Rob Sheffield devotes a chapter to talking about Rod Stewart, a guy so uncool that he's cool merely by being uncool. No, really: the guy is so unpretentious that he's basicially a class unto himself. I remember Rod in the Eighties, mangling the Tom Waits song "Midnight Train," though to be honest I don't really know that Waits sung it any better (something about his "bad on purpose" gruff vocalizations never really appealed to me). Even then, Rod was something of a joke. Now he's coasting on the strength of his classics cover albums, proving that little old ladies like to throw their panties at the stage too.

But there's another side to Rod, the one that's on display in this song from the Faces (previously known as "the Small Faces," because everyone in the band was absurdly short. Imagine Frodo and the gang picking up instruments and you get the idea). You've heard this one, for sure, even if you've never heard any of the other songs I've written about thus far (I admit, my musical tastes can be pretty damn eclectic). It's a ballsy, hell-for-leather rocker from around the same time period as his first solo stuff ("Maggie May" and "Every Picture Tells a Story"), in that post-Beatles, pre-punk era that was both a godsend and an albatross around the neck of so many acts who were left over from the Sixties. Glam was happening, and David Bowie was dressing up like a spider from Mars to shock the parents and appeal to the teens. Mainstream, hetero rock stars started wearing make-up and high heels to appeal to the young folks. And Miley Cyrus wasn't even a glimmer in the eye of her daddy yet.

The early Seventies are justifiably regarded as an abysmal time for rock music, but that's not to say that there wasn't good stuff out there. I know when I first got into punk rock from later in that decade, it was easy to say that the years 1970-1975 were just awful, but a lot of good artists and music emerged from that era. It was the high point of Al Green, who was putting out soul records of unparalleled brilliance. The Kinks were re-imagining themselves as country gentlemen, the BeeGees (yes, the BeeGees) were laying the template for disco with great dance songs, and the Beatles post-break-up were having an interesting war of words via their solo records that would make E! News blush.

Rod Stewart, in this era, was a bit of a journeyman, coming to the Faces around the turn of the decade and injecting them (ha-ha!) with new life. Previously, the Small Faces had been a good but not great group, also-rans in terms of historical importance far behind the Beatles, the Stones, the Who, and others. You can hear the ballyhooed "debt to American blues artists" in Stewart's rough singing style, his voice crying out from pain and from the distinct lack of water to ease his larnyx. Truth be told, I haven't heard much of Rod's Faces work besides this song and "Oh La La" (off the Rushmore soundtrack), but it's hard to reconcile the walking punchline that he became with the guy who's singing here or on his early solo stuff. Sheffield opines that Stewart didn't give a lick about "artistry" and "importance," he was just looking to have a good time. And I bet no one had a better time than Rod Stewart from 1970 to...well, pretty much today as well. Not to be crass, but no one will ever shoot Rod Stewart because they misread Catcher In the Rye and thought Rod was a phoney. Of course he's a phoney, but he's having a hell of a time while he's doing it. You can't be angry at him for that.

The National, "Graceless"

First things first: as I suspected, I was premature in my "car loan paid off!"-ness last week, turns out I still owed about a hundred to the Bank of United States and Principalities and Whatnot. But I paid that this Friday, so *now* I'm paid off! Unless I am mistaken yet again.

Anywho: I am by my nature a comedian of sorts, a "funny guy" who often finds it hard to be serious. But every now and then, I like to go full-on emo and dress in Joy Division-style drab, or at least emotionally dress myself that way. Perhaps it's actual honest-to-goodness depression, or just me trying to take it down a few notches in the "Trevor is always making funny comments" department, because sometimes my funny comments become mean comments. And I am sensitive enough to know when I've crossed the line, though of course often it's in crossing that line that my awareness kicks in.

In those times, I have gravitated far from the feel-good pop music that is often on the radio at the time (seems like an epic time for cheesiness whenever I'm in a foul mood), far from the stuff that, in my own record collection, would normally be my go-to good-time music. I'm talking, of course, about listening to Radiohead.

Everyone knows Radiohead, so I don't need to explain who or what they are. But for a time there, between "OK Computer" and "Hail to the Thief," every band wanted to be them, or reacted against their sad-bastard rock (remember that it's songs from "The Bends" that are playing in Clueless when the screenwriter wanted Paul Rudd to seem like a dreamy, indie-rock depressed dude. But, you know, dreamy, in a former-stepbrother kind of way for Alicia Silverstone). Bands like Coldplay were compared to them because 1.) they sounded like Radiohead and 2.) they sucked compared to Radiohead (though in all fairness, Coldplay has launched onto their own delusions-of-grandeur rock, a' la U2, and truth be told, if they ever put out a best-of, I'd buy it). Radiohead themselves got tired of being "Radiohead," as anyone who's ever sat through that documentary of the "OK Computer" tour can attest. That's why they went into shitty, shitty electronic music.

You may disagree with me (and that is your right), but Thom Yorke and company went down the rabbithole after "Computer" and turned into the sort of detached "artists" that so often take themselves seriously, at the sake of what actually got them there in the first place. Yes, I loved "The Bends" (not when it came out, but later, when I'd had enough life experience in heartbreak and disappointment to "get" it), and "OK Computer" (whose hypnotic video for "Karma Police" still haunts my subconscious). But sometimes you follow a band for too long, and you lose that initial feeling that "these guys speak for me!" because they don't or you can speak for yourself or the lead singer turns out to be a dick or the guitarist wants to make a Spaghetti Western soundtrack on the side or the drummer explodes or what have you. I'm not saying that I wouldn't welcome a return of Radiohead back into my life with new music, but for the most part I'm good with anything pre-"Amnesiac." Because that was my shoe-gazing music.

Shoe-gazing, if you aren't familiar, is a handle created for neo-psychedelic English bands around the beginning of the Nineties (i.e., you're so stoned you gaze at your shoes while the band plays on), but it could just as well apply for downer music, because when you're down you look at your feet and wonder why they just don't wanna move. To me, the National is shoe-gazing music par excellence, and a future contender for "mope-rock kings" if they're not already. I'm barely familiar with anything to do with them, I caught a performance of this song (and I think "Don't Swallow the Cap" blended with it) on The Colbert Report, and I went out for the album shortly after. I won't front: this summer has been hard for me, and at the time the National were perfect. But I could only take so much of their admittedly entrancing doom and gloom; every now and then I might pop it into my car stereo (my chief means of listening to music of my own choosing), but after a day or two it's time to switch it up. My chief switch-to choice has been a Talking Heads best-of. Make of that what you will.

Perhaps the National can become my new favorite band, but I doubt it; musical love affairs start to decline as you age, as you can hear something a new artist is doing and remember it sounding like something you once loved and never quite trusting either again. And I'm not saying I hear Radiohead in the National (I get more of a Joy Division vibe, especially with the baritone lead singer), but Radiohead helped me out in a time of woe and strife as the National did, and for that I thank them both. Sometimes we need music to be happier than we are, sometimes we need it to be as sad or sadder. It succors us for a while, and then we move on. Like an old friend, it's always there when we need it, but sometimes we don't need it for a long, long time.