Something Around to be Loved: Clay Pigeons by Blaze Foley

Please stop saying that a piece of art gives you “all of the feels” to compliment the emotional breadth of the experience. This hollow, gilded term prefers songs, movies, conversations etc. that dip their toes into every possible emotional variant rather than using that time to venture to Jacques Cousteau depths. I worry that texture and nuance get lost in such a tradeoff. This emotional-checklist worldview zips breezily without having the curiosity to really stew. We ought to reserve our most full-throated aplomb for art that prioritizes depth of emotional understanding (or short of understanding, attempts at connection).

Country music, perhaps more than any other musical genre, generously provides a worthwhile collection of samples for this experiment. The genre has historically celebrated relatable, common-folk stories of maudlin schmaltz. Common country topics such as farm life, imbibing and amorous pursuits can be elevated by a deep look inward. Evidenced in the paradigm establishing Hank Williams, the trucker ambles of Red Sovine and the lovelorn laments of Dolly Parton, twang and respect of the beauty of sadness have long been knocking boots. Depth and sincerity reflect a curiosity of life’s hardships in rhyming couplets. The wallops are not only acceptable, but an immutable feature of living. Songs like these let you know that others feel overwhelmingly small and Hindenburg flawed.

Modern popular country music fails to bother to look deeper in favor of feeling the alls. To cite two popular “sad” country songs for further evaluation, I will use Brad Paisley’s “Whiskey Lullaby” featuring Alison Krauss and Tim Mcgraw’s “If You’re Reading This.” This is not to say these are bad songs, I hold both in high regard. However, these tunes are praised for lyrics that are sorrowful, emotional and capable of “exquisitely ruin[ing] your whole afternoon.” Basically these are what country stations on the dial consider weepers today.

Tim Mcgraw penned “If You’re Reading This” with Brad and Brett Warren as a response to an all too common experience. As the wars escalated in Afghanistan and Iraq, soldiers’ families were dealing with the loss of loved ones. Shortly after the execution of Sadam Hussein, Mcgraw performed this song for the first time onstage at the American Country Music Awards alongside families of fallen soldiers. This song employs the heartbreaking lens of a soldier’s farewell letter meant only to be delivered to family in the event of an untimely death. A clever way to detail the cascade of tragedies. Words written by soldiers in perfect health juxtaposed with the family reading the letter, fully aware of the conclusion of that life. 

This tune however features some sentiments that slow the downward, inward dovetail. The soldier, of the Christian faith, consoles his mom with the line “I’m up here with God and we’re both watching over you.” He later expresses “I’m already home” with further burial instructions to “lay me down in that open field out on the end of town.” The horror is made bearable by belief in scripture and the consolation of finality. A hand from above picking you up after you got punched in the gut. Despair undercut by hope for an afterlife.

Brad Paisley and Alison Krauss detail a different kind of fatal heartbreak, that stemming from lost love. Their duet chronicles the way a failed relationship dominoed as both lives were ruined by regret and booze. The floor to this spiral evocatively captured with “he put that bottle to his head and pulled the trigger.” When the line is repeated from her perspective, the point is clear: they loved each other in ways they lacked the ability to express. 

This song also takes solace in a final resting place as both are buried beneath a significant willow tree. The protagonists redeem their suffering by sharing its burdens from a distance. Mutually requited, unrequited love. A longing that was brutal, yet finite. They may have stumbled through the balance of their post-breakup lives as miserable alcoholics, but the afterlife greeted them with “angels [that] sang a whiskey lullaby.” This infinite, eternal reward undercuts the finite years of suffering. To paraphrase Seneca, what need is there to weep over parts of existence when an infinite amount of time thereafter calls for heavenly redemption?

A helpful way to frame my argument comes courtesy of legendary horror writer Stephen King. In Danse Macabre, King pontificates, “Nothing is so frightening as what’s behind the closed door. The audience holds its breath along with the protagonist as she/he (more often she) approaches that door.” King dealt in the realm of fear specifically, but this model can apply broadly to all emotions. Those we choose not to examine carry the infinite anxiety of the potential for the absolute worst case scenario. Opening the door represents continuing to explore and look deeper in that one direction with the added potential that the following room has yet another door to explore. “Whiskey Lullaby” and “If You’re Reading This” poetically head down a series of doors before looking for a heavenly escape through the roof rather than pulling another handle. 

Enter hard-living troubadour Blaze Foley and his haunting baritone. A man who took his stage name from claiming to be the illegitimate child of Blaze Starr (a stripper famous for producing smoke from between her legs) and Red Foley (a drunkard of a country music legend). Blaze may have never owned a guitar and often slept underneath barroom pool tables. Lacking the necessary negative attributes of a traditionally defined success, Blaze came one dingy bar (The Austin Outhouse) away from winning a $100 bet that he could get kicked out of every music venue within Austin city limits. This “derelict in duct tape shoes” lived with a madcap disregard for his life, but also begged with his dying breath (at the age of 39) not to be forgotten. He did also write one of Merle Haggard’s favorite songs (one the legend from Bakersfield, California later covered) and held his own with the likes of Lucinda Williams, Gurf Morlix, Townes van Zandt and Steve Earle. In my estimation, Blaze peaked with his recording of “Clay Pigeons” off the posthumously released “Live at the Austin Outhouse” record. Amongst the ambient noise of billiards players, clinking drinks and the low hum of side conversations, Blaze delivers his opus. An unrelenting drudge. Like clay pigeons, we exist to be shattered. I would advise you listen to the song with the lyrics pulled up before reading on.

The song begins in a moment of flux. Rather than a bright, optimistic future, Blaze is drawn to the unspectacular. The woman has a perfectly average, post-war, picket fence ideal of two and a half kids. The sun rises and sets. A cosmic mundanity that sets the stage for the narrator’s (and presumably Blaze’s) despair. The world, indifferent to your suffering, keeps turning. As Bojack Horseman concludes, “sometimes life’s a bitch and then you keep living.”

Next he breaks into what appears to be a settled new life of singing and reconnecting with friends. Our hero, however, remains lost. The novelty of new lyrics and new audiences provides no relief from the onslaught. He still must “get used to bein’ alone.” Life continues, prolonging our protagonist’s hidden suffering. The shiny excitement of show biz a gilded facade over a deep emptiness. A feeling perfectly described with the following line:

I’m tired of runnin’ ’round

Lookin’ for answers to questions that I already know

I could build me a castle of memories

Just to have somewhere to go

The illusion of progress ensures the wheels keep turning, but not for the betterment of our protagonist. The knowledge that no “answer” exists is in fact the answer. This echoes Kierkegaard’s pre-existentialist freedom (“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom” or “Life is not a problem to be solved, but a reality to be experienced”) rather than the soaring, optimistic version of freedom common in popular culture. The optimism inherent in asking a question undone by the knowledge that real, true answers do not exist. 

A castle of memories just to have somewhere to go, do isolation and loneliness get any more tragically poetic than that? Pursuing goals only to prevent ourselves from questioning their significance. Palaces of achievement for the sake of something else to do. Empty moments build to an even more ubiquitous nothing. The summation remains unchanged by the addition of another zero. 

Our protagonist continues his aimless meander knowing his actions will ultimately be forgotten. He rolls that boulder up a hill expecting another nightfall of watching that day’s efforts undone by gravity. And the cycle of heartbreak goes on. Thus is life. A plucker mumbling his way towards realizations made in early 20th century French cafes. The unceasing existential dread of being human reflected in a song that likewise refuses to relent. Day after day of adding zeros. We exist to be shattered. Our existence is utterly insignificant. Attempts to change will inevitably be as meaningless as the existence soup we swim in. Feed the pigeons some clay and turn the night into day.

To further illustrate the depth of Blaze’s version, let me compare the lyrics to the immaculate John Prine’s flawed version. Prine altered Blaze’s lyric after Smokin’ cigarettes in the last seat from Tryin’ to hide my sorrow from the people I meet to a far more upbeat Sing this song for the people I meet. This modified ramp into the chorus disrupts the unrelenting existential dread. By lending a meaning to the struggle, an out, he attempts to avoid the fall. An uplifting lilt that disrupts the downward momentum. An olive branch to the tear ducts. If art is an attempt to understand the world, this decision to stop being curious (and following doors that present themselves) does a disservice to the song and audience. Prine quieted the silent thud of hitting that understanding nothingness.

Here’s to the one feel! The one being deeply observed. Of taking on all the messy burdens accompanying such a probe. Have the courage to keep opening doors rather than assume the worst behind that next door as a rationale for leaving that knob unspun. I hope you will be more open to giving that next artist the opportunity to attempt to wrap their arms around one emotion. You just might make out the hint of a map towards your own understanding.