Finding Myself

          I’ve never been so lost in life as when I was trying to find myself.  I was so busy trying to carve out a new identity for myself that I failed to recognize just who I am in the first place.  I was lost.

          There are a lot of lost souls out there.  It seems it’s almost a cultural mandate that we have to go out looking for ourselves and, when we do, there’s no telling who we might find.  Many people get lost trying to find themselves and come out barely able to recognize themselves (if they come out at all).  

          John Prine sings of one poor lost soul in this classic song –

 

Come Back to Us Barbara Lewis Hare Krishna Beauregard
©John Prine

The last time that I saw her
She was standing in the rain
With her overcoat under her arm
Leaning on a horsehead cane
She said “Carl, take all the money”
She called everybody Carl
“My spirit’s broke”
“My mind’s a joke,”
“And getting up’s real hard”

Chorus
Don’t you know her
When you see her?
She grew up
In your back yard
Come back to us
Barbara Lewis
Hare Krishna
Beauregard

Selling bibles at the airports
Buying Quaaludes on the phone
Hey, you talk about
A paper route
She’s a shut in without a home
God save her, please
She’s nailed her knees
To some drugstore parking lot
Hey, Mr. Brown
Turn the volume down
I believe this evening’s shot

Repeat Chorus

Can’t you picture her next Thursday?
Can you picture her at all?
In the Hotel Boulderado
At the dark end of the hall
I gotta shake myself and wonder
Why she even bothers me
For if heartaches were commercials
We’d all be on T.V.

Repeat Chorus

 

 

 

for more information on singer/songwriter John Prine,  check out the John Prine Shrine.  You can purchase Prine’s music and other materials at Oh Boy Records.

 

{first published May 27, 2007}