I don’t have a song to post tonight for my 30-day COVID-19 creativity challenge. I was working on a song. A couple, actually. Writing lines, scratching them out, this chord progression, that one, any old thing. And then I took a break to watch a documentary about Garth Brooks (because one of the lines that came to me while walking my dog this afternoon reminded me of one of his songs). And then I saw the news.
This virus is godawful. It’s wreaking havoc across the globe. And it’s surely like nothing that I’ve ever known in my lifetime – social distancing and working remotely for weeks on end. Watching as a bystander to a wholly inept federal government response, a public health system that is incomprehensible, a collective public who believes the most inane concepts and ideas, spouted by a bunch of people who are something less than human.
And then. Then. I see the news that John Prine, my John Lennon, has succumbed to this virus. It’s like the wind knocked out of me. I’ve got nothing now to sing tonight. I’ve got no more words to put on the pages. I just need a break. For a few hours. To imagine never getting the gift of the simplest/substantive song ever written, again. What he could do… no other.
If you don’t know him (like the simpleton on Twitter who blocked me after I called him out for tweeting, “Never heard of him”) please seek him out. You can adore your McCartney/Lennon, your Dylan, your Mitchell, and more. Amazing songwriters, all. But John Prine, for me, will never cross my lifetime again.
I miss him already.
A Librarian by Any Other Name 
“To imagine never getting the gift of the simplest/substantive song ever written, again” Exactly.
After hearing “Hello in There”, you just have to look at people differently.
I’m going to miss him so, Mary Ellen. Posting a song that I wrote for him now.