On What Should Have Been John Prine's 74th Birthday

Today would have been John Prine’s 74^th birthday, but he died in April from complications of the coronavirus. Folk Alley is celebrating the day by playing his music all day—from midnight until midnight. I have been listening to his music continuously since awakening this morning at 6:15 am. Yes, various disc jockeys play the same songs, but I don’t care about the repetition at all. I have been listening to some of these songs for almost fifty years. At some point not long into the morning, I made a conscious decision to spend this entire day with John Prine, and now at 4:15p I know that I chose the best way to live my day in celebration with this wonderful man and his work. Over the course of today, I was enveloped in the music of  John Prine that revealed a remarkably constant and coherent display of one the kindest, socially conscious, humble, empathetic public performer I have ever experienced. Indeed, I can’t compare him with anyone else with whom I have known and even enjoyed. Within Prine’s songs rests an ironic acknowledgement of a sometimes chaotic and difficult world in which frail and often befuddled humans negotiate with more and less skill seeking some satisfaction and even happiness, and in which they achieve mostly marginal and imperfect result; of love surprisingly hard to find and often too soon lost, but that once realized changes everything about life; of a world in which those in power would ban all independence and sense of fun but in which protest is imperative; of a world that doesn’t always make sense and that can be sometimes cruel and cold but in which consideration of others and opportunities to offer for solace and comfort are always possible; and of a world in which dreams remain  too often unrealized but in which dreaming does not cease. 

 

The consistency of this world view throughout John Prine’s entire corpus has been rarely, well, if ever on view even among my heroes of the folk and rock world. Despite 50 years in the cut-throat environment of the record/recording industry a life of touring and hotel rooms and diner foods; of war and corruption, Prine’s work never capitulated to cynicism, despair or fear. Come on home, you don’t have to be alone, come on home. I wish I’d felt that. I wish I’d said that, and now I have. 

 

Today would have been John Prine’s 74^th birthday, but he died in April from complications of the coronavirus. Maybe it didn’t have to be this way and maybe the wrong people died from this iteration of the plague. But my day has been ennobled through my participation in this celebration of what should have been John Prine’s 74^th birthday. But that’s the way that the world goes round, one day you’re up, the next you’re down . . .