As a teenager, I would lie stomach-down on my bed in the evenings after homework, fully plugged into my stereo system paid for with babysitting money and boasting waist-high speakers and cockpit-style headphones. From this position, I would pore over the painful, delicious lyrics of the CD jacket that gave me the insight I desired to connect with the artist and the message he delivered through the pounding foam covering my ears. It was here in the CD jacket that I discovered that Steve Miller never intended "Big Old Jet Had a Light Out" but simply "Big Ol Jet Airliner." The CD jacket cleared the air for many misguided listeners who got their information previously from the one-dimensional jackets of cassette tapes.
Today I bought the new John Mayer CD "Born and Raised." I had not purchased a CD in a few months and decided that it would be the perfect soundtrack to a nippy but clear fall day and some banana-bread baking at home. As soon as I crossed the parking lot of Walmart with my buy, I nestled myself into the driver's seat and commenced to nipping the CD cellophane with my teeth and trying to pull the adhesive strip off of the case so I could preview my new tunes on the drive home.
By the time I turned into my driveway and triggered the garage door opener, the CD had already progressed to the ninth song on the disc. Earlier in the day, I had spent the afternoon with my mom at a lakeside cafe having bowls of toasty chili for lunch as we dished on life, the pursuit of happiness, and the beauty of the world around us through the floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out onto the lake. I had already been contemplating my life's direction and evaluating past and present decisions. The ninth song on the CD interrupted my getting out of the car and carrying my groceries into the house. I turned off the ignition and leaned into the dashboard as the song wrapped its melody around my ear and had curled my attention toward a man named Walt Grace that Mr. Mayer found worthy of praise. I followed along with my eyes and got lost in Walt Grace's plight.
"Walt Grace's Submarine Test, January 1967"
Walt Grace, desperately hating his old place
Dreamed to discover a new space and buried himself alive
Inside his basement
The tongue on the side of his face meant
He's working away on displacement
And what it would take to survive
'Cause when you're done with this world
You know the next is up to you
And his wife told his kids he was crazy
And his friends said he'd fail if he tried
But with the will to work hard and a library card
He took a homemade, fan blade, one-man submarine ride
That morning the sea was mad and I mean it
Waves as big as he'd seen it deep in his dreams at home
From dry land, he rolled it over to wet sand
Closed the hatch up with one hand
And pedaled off alone
'Cause when you're done with this world
You know the next is up to you
And for once in his life, it was quiet
As he learned how to turn in the tide
And the sky was aflare when he came up for air
In his homemade, fan blade, one-man submarine ride
One evening, when weeks had passed since his leaving
The call she planned on receiving finally made it home
She accepted the news she never expected
The operator connected the call from Tokyo
'Cause when you're done with this world
You know the next is up to you
Now his friends bring him up when they're drinking
At the bar with his name on the side
And they smile when they can, as they speak of the man
Who took a homemade, fan blade, one-man submarine ride.
Dreamed to discover a new space and buried himself alive
Inside his basement
The tongue on the side of his face meant
He's working away on displacement
And what it would take to survive
'Cause when you're done with this world
You know the next is up to you
And his wife told his kids he was crazy
And his friends said he'd fail if he tried
But with the will to work hard and a library card
He took a homemade, fan blade, one-man submarine ride
That morning the sea was mad and I mean it
Waves as big as he'd seen it deep in his dreams at home
From dry land, he rolled it over to wet sand
Closed the hatch up with one hand
And pedaled off alone
'Cause when you're done with this world
You know the next is up to you
And for once in his life, it was quiet
As he learned how to turn in the tide
And the sky was aflare when he came up for air
In his homemade, fan blade, one-man submarine ride
One evening, when weeks had passed since his leaving
The call she planned on receiving finally made it home
She accepted the news she never expected
The operator connected the call from Tokyo
'Cause when you're done with this world
You know the next is up to you
Now his friends bring him up when they're drinking
At the bar with his name on the side
And they smile when they can, as they speak of the man
Who took a homemade, fan blade, one-man submarine ride.
As I write this, I have listened to song number 9 at least a dozen times and I just bought the CD 3 hours ago. I have tried to decide if the song was simply fictitious or maybe a metaphor for something going on in in Mr. Mayer's own life at the time the song was written. Perhaps Walt Grace was a real man who simply had enough of the unsatisfying circumstances of his life in 1967. I reckon I could just ask Google while I'm online tonight if Walt Grace was a real person or just a fictional musical subject like the Beatles' "Mrs. Robinson" or Barry Manilow's "Mandy", but I am not sure I want to disrupt my image of Mr. Grace, the squatty, be-speckled, milk-toast family man turned maverick with a library card and a desire to formulate a blueprint for a means of encapsulating himself and propelling him where the current may sweep. Beyond the pun, if I look beneath the surface, I see Walt Grace as a man deafened momentarily by the weight of the sea who facilitated his escape and then later re-birthed him from her watery womb. Upon another repeat of the song and now a familiarity with Walt Grace, I could conclude that sadly Grace succumbed to the numbness of suicide and perhaps even going so far to say that the fan blade which propelled him under the water was a knife that generated a pair of sad incisions to his own wrists in a bathtub. Perhaps he vanished into thin air and resurfaced in Toyko, where it was here, by the blade of the fan in his hotel room, Walt Grace dogged the heels of death until the two were reconciled at the end of a rope for eternity and it was his casket that transported him beneath the waves of time. As he surfaces, the sky was set "aflare;" I can see that it would only be the real hell had awaken to find himself in and at the same time, I can't help but think how Walt Grace ended up there with purpose and intent.
For whatever reason, I find myself standing on the shore in this song waving to a man I have never known, in person or in fiction, silently mourning him on as he glides out past the breakers. I am slightly relieved to know that the unfulfilled, laughing stock of a man eventually came up for air in a painless new world by means of death in metaphor or by literal re-appearance in a humbly cobbled watercraft. I can say that Walt Grace was a man who managed to live on through the tales told by the casual naysayers who doubted he had the guts to go through with it, be it pursuing life or running down death. I do know, he has been haunting my thoughts all afternoon and his ode plays on in my mind long after the CD has come to rest in its entirety.
Nicely done, Mr. Mayer. Something to be said for finding the great importance is printing the lyrics and letting us become fully entwined in the music....and in this case, the man.
For whatever reason, I find myself standing on the shore in this song waving to a man I have never known, in person or in fiction, silently mourning him on as he glides out past the breakers. I am slightly relieved to know that the unfulfilled, laughing stock of a man eventually came up for air in a painless new world by means of death in metaphor or by literal re-appearance in a humbly cobbled watercraft. I can say that Walt Grace was a man who managed to live on through the tales told by the casual naysayers who doubted he had the guts to go through with it, be it pursuing life or running down death. I do know, he has been haunting my thoughts all afternoon and his ode plays on in my mind long after the CD has come to rest in its entirety.
Nicely done, Mr. Mayer. Something to be said for finding the great importance is printing the lyrics and letting us become fully entwined in the music....and in this case, the man.
*Video link posted above*
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