Everybody Knows--Dixie Chicks

This song has been rattling around in my head for a couple of days.

I think it's a quintessential trait of a person born in the United States to think that they can reinvent themselves, move somewhere else and start a whole new life, regardless of the past. It's steeped in our popular culture, and is becoming more prevalent as fame transcends talent in our collective psyche. Having been subject to enough people in my life who played judge, jury, and hangman, I can fully appreciate this.

But you can't run from the past. Yeah, the past is done and gone, but it would take a colossal, psychotic effort--repression worthy of Sam Shepherd or Tennessee Williams--to pull it off. And there's a big difference between nuts and nutty. Nutty is okay, but run like hell from nuts.

Anyway, no matter how crazy the person, there are still cracks, and the past will seep in somewhere and do it's work.

Sometimes, the best thing to do is turn around and face the past bearing down on you like a herd of half-crazed wildebeests. It's gonna hurt, but once the herd passes, you can (hopefully) dust yourself off and resume your journey.




Tell me now if you came sneaking up behind
Would you know me and see behind the smile
I can change like colors on a wall
Hoping no one else will find what lies beneath it all
I think I hide it all so well

Stepping out, everyone can see my face
All the things I can't erase from my life
Everybody knows
Standing out so you won't forget my name
That's the way we play this game of life
Everybody knows

Looking through the crowd
I search for something else
But every time I turn around
I run into myself
Here I stand
Consumed with my surroundings
Just another day
Of everybody looking
I swore they'd never see me cry
You'll never see me cry

Stepping out, everyone can see my face
All the things I can't erase from my life
Everybody knows
Standing out so you won't forget my name
That's the way we play this game of life
Everybody knows

You say I'll pay the price
That's the chance that I'll take
Though you may think I'm telling lies
But I just call it getting by

Stepping out, everyone can see my face
All the things I can't erase from my life
Everybody knows

Standing out so you won't forget my name
That's the way we play this game of life
Everybody knows I am just barely getting by

Cowboy Take Me Away

Por Susanna...she's starting to learn this on the guitar...

Can I be your cowboy, darlin'...?

I said I wanna touch the earth
I wanna break it in my hands
I wanna grow something wild and unruly

I wanna sleep on the hard ground
In the comfort of your arms
On a pillow of bluebonnets
In a blanket made of stars

Oh it sounds good to me I said

Cowboy take me away
Fly this girl as high as you can
Into the wild blue
Set me free oh I pray
Closer to heaven above and
Closer to you closer to you

I wanna walk and not run
I wanna skip and not fall
I wanna look at the horizon
And not see a building standing tall

I wanna be the only one
For miles and miles
Except for maybe you
And your simple smile

Oh it sounds good to me
Yes it sounds so good to me

Cowboy take me away
Fly this girl as high as you can
Into the wild blue
Set me free oh I pray
Closer to heaven above and
Closer to you closer to you

I said I wanna touch the earth
I wanna break it in my hands
I wanna grow something wild and unruly
Oh it sounds so good to me

Cowboy take me away
Fly this girl as high as you can
Into the wild blue
Set me free oh I pray
Closer to heaven above and
Closer to you closer to you
Closer to you
Cowboy take me away.
Closer to you

Wide Open Spaces

It's so hard being a parent. Letting go. Standing back. Watching.

And I missed so much of my kids' lives, so now when I see my kids spreading their wings it just tells me how much is gone. But I keep telling them I want them to grow up. I want them to experience life and learn about life and learn how to live life.

My only feeble defense for the things I've done in the past and the choices I've made is that I feel you teach you kids how to live their lives by living your own. I think the big mistake my generation as parents have made is giving up their entire lives for their kids. Giving up everything to drive them to soccer games and ballet lessons and hockey practice. Giving up their own dreams and aspirations for their kids.

But, the day my oldest left for college I was playing the Dixie Chicks in the car. Playing? I was blasting them. And this song aways brings tears to my eyes. Because it just nails what it means to be young and starting out on your life, or conversely, it acknowledges to a parent that a part of their life is over.



But even harder is supporting your kid in something she wants to do that you wouldn't choose. Someone I know actually had this conversation with her son:

Mom: What do you want to do? You have to choose.

(So he chooses.)

Mom: That's the wrong choice.

What the hell does that teach him? Except lie to his mother?

Your kids are going to live their own lives; you can't live them for them. And now, my youngest is choosing to do the one thing I thought she wouldn't do. She's choosing not to play on her school softball team. Instead, she's working on the semi-formal committee. (And playing volleyball, but that's something else entirely. Volleyball is really cool; I had no idea until I started watching it.)

The semi-formal committee? She's helping choose a theme for a dance. A color-scheme. It wouldn't have been my first choice.

Last year she was the Defensive MVP on the freshman team. I coached her all through town ball, from the time her first glove was about the size of my hand. We sat on a bench together when we didn't live together. We had that time to ourselves. She has talent. And I thought she loved the game. But now she said it's not any fun anymore. (Well, going 0 for whatever last season doesn't help.)

I tell her she has talent and she should use it. But then I think: it's her life. She's going to live it the way she wants. And I have no right to tell her how to live it. The one thing I can do is support her 100% in whatever she wants to do. After all, she was eight years old and stood by me...eight years old...when adults were jumping ship like rats.

She's quite a kid. She's quite a person.

So, I guess the best thing to do is give her her wide open spaces to move.

Dixie Chicks: I'm not ready to make nice

Sometimes I can be just mean and testy, and here's why.

Thanks Al.


Forgive, sounds good.
Forget, I'm not sure I could.
They say time heals everything,
But I'm still waiting

I'm through, with doubt,
There's nothing left for me to figure out,
I've paid a price, and i'll keep paying

I'm not ready to make nice,
I'm not ready to back down,
I'm still mad as hell
And I don't have time
To go round and round and round
It's too late to make it right
I probably wouldn't if I could
Cause I'm mad as hell
Can't bring myself to do what it is
You think I should

I know you said
Why can't you just get over it,
It turned my whole world around
and i kind of like it

I made my bed, and I sleep like a baby,
With no regrets and I don't mind saying,
It's a sad sad story
That a mother will teach her daughter
that she ought to hate a perfect stranger.
And how in the world
Can the words that I said
Send somebody so over the edge
That they'd write me a letter
Saying that I better shut up and sing
Or my life will be over

I'm not ready to make nice,
I'm not ready to back down,
I'm still mad as hell
And I don't have time
To go round and round and round
It's too late to make it right
I probably wouldn't if I could
Cause I'm mad as hell
Can't bring myself to do what it is
You think I should

I'm not ready to make nice,
I'm not ready to back down,
I'm still mad as hell
And I don't have time
To go round and round and round
It's too late to make it right
I probably wouldn't if I could
Cause I'm mad as hell
Can't bring myself to do what it is
You think I should

Forgive, sounds good.
Forget, I'm not sure I could.
They say time heals everything,
But I'm still waiting

Wide Open Spaces

Got my daughter’s Valentine today. Opened it up and my heart caught in my throat. I’m not going to reveal what she wrote—that’s personal between her and me—but it sure is nice when your kid doesn’t think you’re a s**t after everything you’ve done to her in your life. (Is there a parent alive who doesn’t think that they’ve failed their children in some way?)

So…as I was driving away I popped in the Dixie Chicks and played Wide Open Spaces in her honor off the CD of the same name. I was playing that CD back in August when her mom and I were dropping her off for her freshman year in college. I turned my daughter on to it on the drive out there, and all of the emotion of day just came out in that song.

That’s the thing about country music: how it can just nail an emotion. It’s also the one criticism I have of popular country music, that a lot of it nails the emotion and then you just wallow in it. I mean, just how long can we pick that sore? The thing that I like about the blues is how it can nail an emotion and then it takes you somewhere else. And then of course, there’s really bad country, songs along the caliber of Kenny Chesney’s She Thinks My Tractor’s Sexy.

But the Dixie Chicks do have those nice harmonies going.

So, for Allison’s and everyone else who has ever struck out on their own, here are the lyrics to Wide Open Spaces:

Who doesn't know what I'm talking about 

Who's never left home, who's never struck out 

To find a dream and a life of their own 

A place in the clouds, a foundation of stone 



Many precede and many will follow 

A young girl's dream no longer hollow 

It takes the shape of a place out west 

But what it holds for her, she hasn't yet guessed 



[Chorus:] 

She needs wide open spaces 

Room to make her big mistakes 

She needs new faces 

She knows the high stakes 



She traveled this road as a child 

Wide eyed and grinning, she never tired 

But now she won't be coming back with the rest 

If these are life's lessons, she'll take this test 



[Repeat Chorus]


She knows the high stakes 


As her folks drive away, her dad yells, "Check the oil!" 

Mom stares out the window and says, "I'm leaving my girl" 

She said, "It didn't seem like that long ago" 

When she stood there and let her own folks know 



[Repeat Chorus] 


She knows the highest stakes 

She knows the highest stakes 

She knows the highest stakes 

She knows the highest stakes