Day 208: Lucinda Williams, You Complete Me

I don't want you anymore

cause you took my joy

i don't want you anymore

you took my joy

you took my joy

i want it back

you took my joy

i want it back 

- Lucinda Williams 

When I need a bit of a pick me up or kick in the ass, I listen to this song. Besides being impossibly funky (a nearly remarkable accomplishment considering it's only one chord), this song in an in-your-face declaration that I'm going to get what's mine, and if you don't like it, kiss my arse kindly, sir. Everyone should have such an anthem. Everyone should be able to decree such intent and purpose.

Me and Lucinda go way back. Longer than she knows. I meet Lucinda through Roseanne (Cash) and Shawn (Colvin). She also used to hang around Mary (Chapin Carpenter). I feel hard for Lucinda the first time I heard her belt out her songs. She wasn't famous yet. She was just starting out. Her voice wasn't even the best my ears had fell prey to, but god, she had a way with words, and if I'm a sucker for anything, it's a woman who knows her way around words. Lucinda had me wrapped around her finger from our first encounter.

I introduced Lucinda to everyone I knew, including my family. My kids fell for her about as hard as I did. Today, there's not a soul in my brood that hasn't been affected by Lucinda. Three of my kids have her music in their digital libraries, and the fourth would if she was old enough to know what a digital library is. I've danced with my wife while Lucinda played just a few feet away on one stage or another picking and singing. I've listened to Lucinda when I was happy and sad, angry and elated, dejected and rejected, grounded and high. But it's when I feel like I'm losing ground or losing my grip or slipping away that I find Lucinda most endearing. Those are the times when she speaks to me with the most feeling. Those are the times when Lucinda is able to ground me. Smell the dirt. See the sky. Feel the breeze. Sense my surroundings. Put my feet on the ground.

I have had love affairs with a lot of women--singers, that is. Rickie Lee (Jones), Ella (Fitzgerald), Nina (Simone), Bjork, Lena (Horne). None, though, make me swoon like Lucinda. Maybe it's because I can see Lucinda and I having a drink, having a conversation, taking a walk, drawing comparisons. Maybe it's because Lucinda is beyond vulnerable, and I dig people who are vulnerable. Maybe it's because she's honest and true. Maybe it's because she has been around the block, and I dig experience. Whatever it is, I'm in deep for Lucinda. I also owe her mightily. She's kept me company on many a night when I needed it..