Man in the Bottle

I suppose you ought to know you're in trouble when you realize you consider your daily dive into the soothing depths of the bottle to be somehow heroic.

But the truth is that I was not just a willful and enthusiastic drunk, I didn't just romanticize drunken nescience -- I exulted it as somehow emblematic of man's struggle with his own weaker nature.

In those days -- and for a long time after -- I viewed my drinking as a badge of honor, like a wounded survivor proud of his crutch.

So, where you might see the protagonist of this song as, oh, say, for arguments sake, a pathetic loser, when I was writing it, I saw the guy as a tragic hero, battered and wounded, yet rising (through the haze of a thousand hangovers stretched end to end) to face the sysiphean ordeal of daily life...

He could give up.

But, somehow, he reaches deep inside himself to find that last bit of courage, reaches for his medicine, and goes on to face another day.

Blue Recollection
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Saturday, November 05, 2005
Friday, April 07, 2006

lyrics
Blue Recollection

Now the last thing I remember
You were walking out the door
My hand reached for the bottle
then there ain't no more

you're just a blue recollection
that ain't nothin' new
I been having trouble forgetting
to remember that I don't still love you


I wake up at nite
but it ain't because of you
I'm just listening to the plaster crack
and the clock tick in the next guy's room

you're just a blue recollection
that ain't nothin' new
I been having trouble forgetting
to remember that I don't still love you

Now the last thing I remember
You were walking out the door
My hand reached for the bottle
then there ain't no more...

(C)1987, 2007, TK Major