Weekend Music: John Prine with a Beautiful Arch-Top

Look at this guitar. Just look at it.

An Austin City Limits classic. Since I’m thinking a lot about grandparenthood and mortality right now, it seems appropriate. I was ten years old when this was recorded.

I don’t actually wear my suit to dinner, but I do hammer nails in planks. And chain-smoke Camel cigarettes (I gotta cut those out). I don’t build houses, stores and banks, exactly. But I do build things. Social things.

Here’s the same artist 32 years later, singing what is, according to him, the best song he ever wrote.

I agree. “Hello in There” is my favorite song of his. Possibly my favorite song ever.

Life is short, people. We all have ideas about what happens after life. And preferences about what should happen. Some of us think “there’s a better . . home awaitin’ . .  in the sky, Lord, in the sky.” Some of us expect death to be nothingness. Some of us think it would be cool, and is pretty likely, that we get to be reborn into some life-friendly physical world and try the whole thing over again.

None of us actually know. All we have for sure is this life right here in front of us. The one we’re in the midst of. And really, it’s not even wise to think in terms of the life. We have this day, maybe. We have this next hour. That’s all we have for sure.

So make the most of it.

If you don’t know John Prine, you don’t know American music.

Say “Hello in there.” Say it every time life offers you an opportunity to do so.