At the Age of 27
I love Marianne Faithful. A lot. I love her voice. I love how well she’s aged. And, most of all, I love her attitude — she manages to seem somehow world-weary and cynical but basically happy.
When I spoke at Rice in March, I was speaking mostly about the changes in notions of dropping out, running from 1960s commune living or biker movie bliss to Gen X McJobs. The students, for the most part, seemed a little horrified. I asked them what they wanted out of their lives, and as an assembled group, they arrived generally at money and power. Those have never been the things I wanted, and so I always feel a little sad when I hear those as primary goals, partially because I think they’re the sort of things you can never have enough of and are therefore inherently unsatisfying as goals. I want to be successful, sure, and happy, but I want those things on terms where I get to have an interesting life and time to think and learn and explore.
The connection between these two things is the song above. “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan” was written by Shel Silverstein and recorded first by Dr. Hook and the Medicine Show (other favorites of mine), but it was Faithfull’s ravaged voice that made the song. For me, “The Ballad of Lucy Jordan” is a record of what not to do. Don’t live your life such that you wake up at 37 and realize you’ll never have the life you dreamed of. And, I suppose, I’d advise that even if what you dream of is money and power. I’m thinking about this because this morning, I woke up to the first day of 27. And, while I don’t usually write much personal here, I just want to note that I hope in another 10 years I wake up in an equally good mood, regardless of whether I’m wealthy or powerful, and I hope that I still feel like there are all sorts of possibilities coming up — even riding through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in my hair.