There's a lot of lowlifes in the world in some lowlife places, but the ones I am thinking of do not fit the typical definition of the word. More so the brand of lowlife envisioned are people who are truly at a low point of their lives. It is funny how different parts of America conjure up different scenes of people and their low lives.
In Boston I think of some Turkey (slang used by some of my Boston buddies in describing off the boat Irish trash because their speech patters resemble the "gobble, gobble") walking into a some South Boston shithole, firing up a pack after he banged it against his arm a few hundred times, putting on The Pouges and saying the word fuck a few more hundred times as another Turkey listens on about his problems. In New York I usually think of some suit hanging out at The Oyster Bar in Grand Central before he hops on the Metro North to go home to a wife he's out of love with after a tryst with a waitress while Sinatra's "Wee Small Hours" album drifts in and out of the conversations around him.
Out in the Pacific Northwest some absurdly hip, uber green waste product from the grunge era sits in a coffee house wondering why his band was never picked up by any labels and dreads another night at the counter in Radio Shack. South in SoCal there's a 19 year old porn star already too old to make a name for herself sitting at a table in some lounge in the valley thinking about life back out on that farm and another dreadful day on that casting couch trying to go mainstream while she circles her pink nails around a bottle of Pacifico and drifts into the feckless ether.
Maybe the first paragraph was a little misleading, while said people certainly are at a low point in their lives they are also some lowlife examples of the human existence. The point being that while the above characters possess such examples there is another part of the country where just because someone is at the end of the rope, it has always seemed more noble.
The South. Sure there are large groups of the population with the same redeeming qualities of previous examples but the scenes that arise in my mind are always so much more romantic. The reason for this is not the people, or the hot, sweaty nights of humidity but rather the music and songs such as this.
This song has been covered so frequently by so many artists that it is hard to pick just one version. So I picked two: George Jones and Alan Jackson's duet and Elvis Costello version from "Almost Blue". Both versions paint a picture of fragility, of noble resignation and happy hopelessness. Both versions I have heard on old Wurlitzers set on hardwood, worn out floors. And in each instance I felt as though I was viewing a Hopper that had yet to be painted. A snippet of classic American life that only exists in such realms. The Turkey? One can see the same guy in Dublin. The Grunge? Not far away from some emmo fag in some underground bar in Paris. The whore in SoCal? Pretty much any place women who are gunning for fame and cash exists such a scene.
For better or worse there's no where else in the world where you can walk into a bar, hear a song like this and see a hulking puddle of a man wash his blues away, A man who just got laid off from the plant, his Chevy's carbs are worn, Sissy is in another double wide with Bud and while he could probably never pen such a song the meaning of it is blowing up in his face that very minute.
At the same time though I often think of country music as a testament to the fact that such strong emotions spurn such beauty as the lyrics of this song. Jerry Chesnut didn't attend Harvard, neither did George Jones, Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, Jerry Jeff Walker, Merle Haggard, Johnny Cash and Waylon Jennings. I would be willing to bet many people wrote them off as shit head rednecks. Maybe they were intelligent to begin with however I like to think that the hurt and booze used them merely as muses and that type of hurt and booze only resides between the 30th and 38th parallels on the eastern side of this great land.
*The image from the header is from the movie Paris, Texas a sublimely beautiful, little known film from the early 80's
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