Delaware Setlist

@stoger wrote:

7 Lines Around Your Eyes [!!!!!!!–by request, solo–Lu says after that she “sometimes forgets about these old songs” and that the band should consider working this one up]

Professor Stoger, First of all, how GREAT that “Lines Around Your Eyes” made the setlist! I’ve never had the pleasure of hearing it live. Second of all, since my writing instructor has instructed me to share my writing with others (apparently, that’s part of the writing process… who knew!), I’m copying a DRAFT paragraph I wrote for my fiction writing class that was inspired by Lu’s “lines around your eyes every time you smile.” The prompt was to write a description of a character (the character, Larry, has tinnitus… long story!):

Working title: “Lifelines”

“Larry studies himself in the mirror. His visage is arid and ruddy. A face deflated, without the plumpness of animation. The lines on his face seem as unintentional and happenstance as dried mud; an assortment of grooves that follow no pattern, with no story to tell. Emotions rarely gather to add meaning or character to his face. Its muscles rarely contract to rise up in laughter, surprise, astonishment or horror. As he tests out different expressions before his reflection, he sees tiny earthquakes, awkwardly shifting his features and causing them to come to rest in unexpected ways. His jowls and the fleshy pockets that pool under his eyes seem tugged upon like sleeves, downward downward down. His eyes, however, are sincere. Brown and sad, they reflect longing. Longing to belong to what they see out in the world, while feeling rebuffed by it. The problem is that the dry expanse of his face is impenetrable, inscrutable to others, and as a result people never bother to look into his eyes. He is 50 years into his face, but its essence annealed long ago into what it is now. When Larry takes measure of a person, he covets the purposeful and telling lines around a person’s eyes or mouth, lines that are improved by smiling, even reflecting a lifetime of it. So many faces seem to have lines that coordinate to tell a story. Lined foreheads from a lifetime of eyebrows raised in lively conversation. Lined dashes between brows, permanently knit in concentration after a career pondering a computer screen or drawing board. Lips surrounded by small vertical lines after being drawn around cigarettes in smoky bars night after night. Deep leathery lines from a life lived outdoors, surfing, herding cattle or directing traffic. Why are others able to harness something as simple and inanimate as wrinkles and accrue them to personal benefit, to enhance character or reflect a worthy life hard lived? This perception of others may not always be accurate, but it is true. Larry has not succumbed to any cardinal or even venial sins, but neither has he earned salvation; he remains in a purgatory limbo in this life. Neither his life nor his hobbies etch traces on his face. Larry sighs and turns away from the mirror.”

http://www.delawareonline.com/story/pulpculture/2014/06/09/lucinda-williams-grand/10227197/

Agreed, stoger. Has a nice hook, too, of the ear worm variety.

I’m hearing it now, over and over…