#141, "Me and Paul," Willie Nelson (1971)

150 Favorite Songs: #141, "Me And Paul," Willie Nelson (1985)

At some point, all you have left of anything are the stories. Sometimes they're sad stories, sometimes they're funny stories, sometimes you've reframed suffering as strength and glory, sometimes you're the hero and sometimes you're the villain. It doesn't matter much. The story is never really true, and that's never the point. It's a way to celebrate who you'd been, if you're proud of who that was, or a way to celebrate how far from that person you've come, if you're not.

All of that's heavy, but the reason I love "Me And Paul" is because it's just such a light take on experiences that I relate to. I received my education on the cities of the nation with a friend, too. I've thought Nashville was the roughest, and I know I'd said the same about them all.

And there are so many songs that make that experience, of touring and being broke and of people fucking with you for no reason, sound like some sort of glorious hell you have to endure to prove your punk rock/outlaw/street-cred/whatever bonafides. I like those songs, but they all seem dishonest—those are stories you tell to frame a dumb, frustrating, uncomfortable time in our lives as something great, because accepting that it was just dumb and frustrating and uncomfortable, and it probably didn’t add up to all that much, is miserable to think about. What is past suffering but glory, in hindsight?

Mostly, the time I spent wandering around America was more like "Me And Paul" than it was Get In The Van or, I dunno, "Turn The Page" or something. A series of silly vignettes that it's easy to romanticize, but which ultimately don't add up to much. The stories are just stories now, and the further you get from them, the less they really matter. The experiences did, for sure, but they were a long time ago now.

I listen to so much self-aggrandizing music, especially about subjects that I relate to. So many of the songs on this list are intense and tortured hymns to lost love and loneliness and desperation and all of those things. When I try to contextualize the period of my life that resembled the story of "Me And Paul," there's something to be said for downplaying it. Not every story has to be the fucking Lord of the Rings, you know?

(The recording embedded here, and on the 150 Favorite Songs playlist, comes from the Johnny Cash/Willie Nelson VH1 Storytellers episode from the 90's. You can hear Johnny Cash chuckle at one line, at one point in the song, which is cute.)