Ear worm Wednesday: "These Days" by Jackson Browne

The great singer-songwriter wrote this classic when he was 16 years old, way too young to have suffered the wistful regrets the song expresses. Or was he?

Note to readers: Last week I introduced this semi-weekly feature with some ear worm science (I think I like “earworm” spelled as two words instead of one from now on.) This week begins the first in the series of what these musings are really supposed to be about: What ear worms mean to me, and to others.

The video clip above is from Wes Anderson’s “The Royal Tanenbaums,” which somehow I had missed seeing over the past 20 years that it has steadily grown into classic and cult status. In the clip, the character played by Gwyneth Paltrow (one of her best roles) strolls out of the bus that has delivered her to her family, accompanied by Nico’s cover of Jackson Browne’s “These Days.” Nico, a German singer who died at the young age of 49, is probably best known for singing with the Velvet Underground and being a member of Andy Warhol’s “entourage.” Her version is a bit rough, I think, but faithful to the original lyrics, which later cover versions (including some by Jackson Browne himself) have sadly truncated, in my view.

That clip from the film, which I probably watched on Netflix DVD two months ago, infected my head with an ear worm that is still very much alive and singing. As I said in the previous post, I like ear worms, and actively keep them going, most often by listening to cover versions on YouTube (sometimes nearly every day.) Why do I like them? I am sure it is an example of obsessive behavior, but obsessive behavior is not always a bad thing in my view. This particular song triggers emotions from my past and present; rather than getting rid of them, I want to keep them around. More on that in a moment.

One of the mysteries of the song, its lyrics as well as its beautiful guitar strummed melody, is how a 16 year old could have written it. As I listened, I wondered what had happened in Browne’s life at that tender age that would lead him to write such lines as these:

I've been out walking
I don't do too much talking
These days, these days
These days I seem to think a lot
About the things that I forgot to do
And all the times I had the chance to.

That’s quite a bit of regret. After some searching, I found an interview with Browne in which he seemed to explain it, sort of:

The interviewer asks Browne just the question I wanted to. “I was completely immersed in the songs of the Beatles and Bob Dylan,’ Browne responds. Thinking back to the room he was in when he wrote it, Browne says he was surrounded by those records. He mentions Dylan’s “It’s All Right, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding),” which was one of my own formative immersions into Dylan in the 1960s, when I was just graduating high school (and released in 1965, when Dylan himself was only 24.)

Browne continues: “There’s the arc of your development as an artist, and the arc of your development as a person. What can you write about when you’re 16, you know?”

So I think the answer begins to emerge. Many teenagers may not have experienced years of pain and disappointment at such a tender age (although far too many have, in terms of poverty, child abuse, neglectful parents, racism, bullying, and all the other ills childhood can be subject to.) But those who are more aware still carry what might be called the collective consciousness of their culture, imbued in them by literature, song, and other mean.

By 1965—the year that Dylan emerged from smoky Greenwich Village clubs into the consciousness of so many American youth, when radio stations began playing “Like a Rolling Stone”—I had read nearly all of Dostoevsky, pretty much all of Kafka and Sinclair Lewis, a lot of Hemingway, and had already delved deeply into existentialist psychologists like Erich Fromm and Rollo May. Two years earlier, John F. Kennedy had been assassinated (ironically, I was in the high school library when the announcement came over the loud speaker), the Civil Rights movement was in full swing, and kids my age were dying in Vietnam.

Back then, we were all old before our time. So too, apparently, was Jackson Browne.

I don’t know enough about music to describe how beautiful “These Days” is as a work of lyrical melody (or even if I am using the right terms), nor why the strumming of a guitar sometimes feels as though the strings are laid across our chests, or our souls. All I can do is post YouTube videos and ask others to share the experience, and experience their own emotions.

But the lyrics are certainly clear. Who has not experienced something like this?

I had a lover
I don't think I'll risk another
These days, these days
And if I seem to be afraid
To live the life that I have made in song
It's just that I've been losing so long

If we could experience loss, regret, nostalgia, grief, and other pain when we were that young, imagine what we are capable of now. Some weeks back I was following a Twitter discussion about grief and closure. I mentioned that my best friend had died of cancer back in 2004, and that I was still mourning him. I said I did not want closure, and people seemed to understand. Perhaps it was because I missed a last chance to see him before he departed this world, and have regretted it ever since? Or just that deliberately subjecting myself to the pain of losing a friend helps to keep him around in some way.

I've stopped my dreaming
I won't do too much scheming
These days, these days
These days I sit on corner stones
And count the time in quarter tones to ten
Please don't confront me with my failures
I had not forgotten them

Yes, Jackson Browne’s “These Days” is an ear worm that has got me bad, but I don’t mind. I will miss it when it goes, if it ever does.