Song Of The Day 12/1/2015: The Band – “When I Paint My Masterpiece”

A Sentimental Education – Here we are, at the last SOTD I'm going to give a damn about in 2015 (i.e., the last song that'll count in the final 2015 tabulations), the 335th entry of the year, finally I'm looking at the last 3 years 8 months of continuous diurnal musical coverage without a single missed day, and for the first time in this entire series I'm looking over the documented history of this feature and the thousands of words it has entailed and thinking, "You know... I could use a break."

I had a notion to take a break towards the end of 2013 but I forgot to exercise the option. I think if you look more closely at some of the latest theme weeks and entries it's pretty clear that in least in terms of Song Of The Day I was kind of scraping up the dregs. For example, last week's allegorical Thanksgiving takedown of Donald Trump. I don't know where that came from. Not sure I wanna. It probably should have been a podcast instead of a literary effort. Perhaps I should have called Central Casting.

However, I'm not going to take a break even as we head into our annual Month O' Filler. I am, however, going to dial down the writing quite a bit, at least until later this month when I suspect I might have a yen to wrap things up with a bit more decoration. That means one-paragraph writeups for the Outtakes series instead of two-paragraph writeups. That means five, maybe six sentences per writeup, with room for only one joke. No more than two. Whatever I can turn out in the most cost-efficient manner possible. Since this is shaping up to be one of the more eventful Decembers I've had recently, I think that's only right. I have no jokes at the moment. I haven't had a good joke in at least two or three weeks. I need to recharge. I need fluids. Mentally, I'll be back on December 26 or 27. Physically I'll only be here for as much time as it takes for me to balance out the cash register.

And we still have today's final entry in A Sentimental Education, a theme week so flimsy I forgot what the original unifying factor was. "When I Paint My Masterpiece" was written by Bob Dylan, recorded by The Band for their 1971 album Cahoots. The late Levon Helm sings lead. The Grateful Dead also covered it in concert a lot. The more I hear this song, the more important it feels like it's getting. It's genuine epitaph material. As far as my own masterpiece is concerned, since I skipped NatNoWriMo again this year you're just going to have to wait again. Check back this time next year when I know everything is gonna be different.

Okay, it's been great communicating with you these last eleven months. We'll pick this back up again after Christmas. Let the phoning in begin. Enjoy your holiday season.