By Jack Rafferty
I discovered John Prine’s work around 2017, with the track “Angel from Montgomery,” and I still remember that moment well. I was working in the field at the time, and my crew lead put this song on while we were driving through the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. We were navigating a two-track road amid really tall sagebrush, and a jackrabbit darted across the path as the song played. I was floored by the honesty and originality of it, and I knew that I had to seek out more music from him as soon as I could.
This led me to listening to his self-titled debut in full, not long after, and falling completely in love with it. This is one of the few nearly perfect albums that have been made, in my opinion. The fact that it was his first album is all the more impressive. For about six months, it was the majority of what I listened to, just putting the album on repeat back-to-back as I traveled to Tucson, when I was digging holes in the desert heat for work, and when I was at home, sipping whiskey under a chitalpa tree. I listened to his albums one by one, some better than others, but I always found something to love on each of them.
Three years later, in the early months of quarantine during the COVID-19 pandemic, John’s songs were what got me out of bed in the morning. I would wake up and grab my phone from the side table to pull up one of his songs, just so I could listen to it while staring at the ceiling trying to find a reason to start the day. His equally serious and unserious approach on the common struggles that humans face, and the humorous yet deeply empathetic way he had of conveying his struggles in his unique songwriting, gave me the strength that I needed to face those hard days. Songs like “Sour Grapes” and “Summer’s End” reflected my overall mood so well that I would simply sit on my porch and play them over and over, while some of his more lighthearted songs, such as “Spanish Pipedream,” “Pretty Good,” “Fish and Whistle,” “Aw Heck,” and so many others were at times the only things that got me through the day.
I was in a dark place then, as many were. I was waking up and drinking liquor as early as nine in the morning. I was lucky, in that I was able to work from home, and still had a steady income to keep a roof over my head and food in my stomach. Nevertheless, the myriad simultaneous social and ecological crises that worsened daily coupled with the deep alienation of having to quarantine alone for months on end put me in perhaps the worst mental state that I had ever been in. John’s music wasn’t just a minor reprieve from all this, it was an anchor tethering me to humanness in a time of unprecedented isolation and inhumanity.
I can’t really put into words how hard the news of his passing hit me on April 7, 2020. The fact that he died from COVID made it even more painful. It felt like a close friend who had been holding my hand through all this hardship suddenly slipped away and was gone before I could turn around to see them disappear. I had never felt so emotionally tied to someone I hadn’t personally known before, and I’m sure my mental state during this time compounded this feeling, but I was inconsolable for days after this. I would stand at the kitchen sink and stare out at the sun setting through the city haze, thinking about everything and nothing at once. It was around this time I wrote a poem, which had the lines “windows above the sink / become dull mirrors for unkind thought” as I would spend hours just looking out of that window, until the light became so dim that all I could see was my sullen reflection staring back at me.
Over the course of weeks and months, I wavered between better and worse, and kept listening to John’s music throughout. It seemed like time stopped having any meaning, and everything started to blur together. I tried to ground myself in little things, in morning coffee, in watching birds, staring at the clouds, short walks. It was only when I connected with my partner later that year that things really improved. The dread of what was happening in the world was still there, but at least I had her.
I’m very grateful that I made it through this point in my life, and that I was able to stay relatively healthy when many others could not. It is strange to feel like the world has just moved beyond this happening, our employers all clamoring to get us back in the office, back to the rat race, when none of us have had time to properly process or heal from such a collectively traumatic occurrence, which in truth has not fully ended, and has only been swept under the rug to maintain the unending death march of capital.
I’m in a much better place now, which I owe to my loved ones and community. I still listen to John all the time, practically every day. No matter what is going on in my life, his music is in the background in one way or another. Thankfully, it doesn’t often serve to remind me of those awful times, and rather continues to inspire me to keep my sense of humor, to treat others with kindness, and to have a gentle disposition. When I’m seeking to still the feelings of bitterness and hate that form because of so much in the world that feels like it rips my heart out daily, I turn to John’s music to remind myself of the importance of not losing myself in those feelings, and to remember my love for the people and the natural world. John reminds me to continue being human in conditions that seem increasingly hell bent on tearing what remains of that away from us. John says in “Angel from Montgomery,”
Just give me one thing that I can hold on to
To believe in this living is just a hard way to go
So I guess this piece is mostly my way of saying thanks to John for giving me one thing that I could hold on to, in a time when I needed it most.
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