Sitting on a park bench Eyeing little girls with bad intent.
Snot's running down his nose Greasy fingers, smearing shabby clothes. Drying in the cold sun Watching as the frilly panties run. Hey, Aqualung.
Take a good long look at those lyrics. Those are the most fucked up lyrics of any rock song I know. And what’s even more fucked up is how many games of pool I’ve played while mindlessly air-guitaring to a song about a homeless pedophile with walking pneumonia.
While well known, Jethro Tull is not one of the all-time great bands. They have a few great songs. And they have a flute. I’ll give them credit for the flute. That was genius.
When Ian Anderson decided to change instruments because he thought he’d never be able to play guitar as well as Eric Clapton, he could have gone in a lot of different directions. The path he chose was unexpected. For that decision, he has my admiration. As far as decisions go, he nailed it.
The best decision I ever made was to shave my head. I started doing it at the beginning of Covid when suddenly you couldn’t go to a barber anymore.
I ordered some electric clippers off Amazon, put on “Needle in the Hay” by Elliot Smith and went to town on a perfectly good head of hair. By the time I was done it looked like the opening scene in Full Metal Jacket.
I never really liked my hair anyways. It’s fine and straight so to make myself not look like a fourth grader I had to put all kinds of crap in it. I always found standing in front of a mirror fussing over my hair to be an emasculating and ultimately unsatisfying experience. But that’s all gone now. One less thing to worry about. One less reason to look in the mirror.
The best thing about not having hair is that you never feel dirty. That grimy feeling that you get in the morning upon waking up with part of your hair going one way and the other part lying matted on its side still asleep, is simply no longer a factor for me.
When I wake up, I feel fresh as a daisy.
When I go swimming, I don’t look ridiculous.
And when I hop on a zoom call nobody can tell that I was just napping.
Hair is for suckers. I think it’s possible we’ve all been misled on the benefits of hair. I think it’s all marketing and we’re just being manipulated by the Mammalian Industrial Complex. I, however, have divested myself of Big Hair. I haven't been to a barber in three years. I've no need for a comb, brush or hairdryer. I don’t even use shampoo anymore. I just apply soap to the entire organism and everything comes out just fine.
Which provides a convenient segue to today’s lesson.
The world is a mess. Banks are collapsing. Russia remains intent on doing anything it can to start WWIII. And China is using TikTok to either collect data on over 100 million Americans or beat us into submission with the world's greatest deluge of absolutely horrible content.
Life is crazy. It’s completely random and chaotic. You never know what’s going to happen from one moment to the next and yet, eventually, it always seems to circle back around to some sort of sustainable normalcy.
At ground level, order descends into chaos. We know that to be true. It's the second law of thermodynamics. But at the same time, on a higher level of the universe, it would seem that somehow chaos reconfigures itself back into order. Only slightly different. This creates unpredictable realities.
It’s how we wind up with a band like Jethro Tull and a song like Aqualung. That’s how you get a guy in a rock band playing a flute. That’s how you get: Feeling like a dead duck. Spitting out pieces of his broken luck.
It’s just that kind of world. And once you realize how ridiculous it is, it all makes perfect sense. One can only conclude that despite massive evidence to the contrary, for the most part: Everything will be fine.
Now allow me to rest my weary fingers while you use yours to hit the play button and listen to the one and only Sara Starling and this wonderful recording of: “A Horrible Mistake”.
Comments