The Only Thing Permanent is Love
I remember clearly the afternoon these pictures were taken. August 1, 2020. I had played an outdoor show in Denison, IA that afternoon. For something like 40 years I had sped past the old rusty carcass on Crawford County road E16 and admired it’s sly elegance, sitting in the weeds. Is it the romantic in us that sees an old thing and imagines the stories it could tell? Maybe it is admiration that the thing has held its ground, stoic, while the world changed sped past.
Things were a bit weird for performers in the summer of 2020 — for everyone, but especially for those who traveled great distances to sing and mingle in crowded spaces. John Prine had died in April and according to people who keep track of such things over 100 noteworthy musicians passed in 2020. That was the eerie subtext of canceled and rescheduled shows. I only played a handful of gigs in a year full of starts and stops, fears and false bravado.
The performance in Denison was a farmers market, weakly attended, but optimism was in the air and I was thrilled to just be singing for my supper on a beautiful Iowa summer day. I remember my parents showed up. Their first outing in months. After the gear was packed up and the cash collected, Lara McAdams and I and stopped at El Jimador on Highway 30. Like most restaurants at the time, the place was almost empty. We sat outside and enjoyed Dos Equis and shrimp cocktail and talked about the performance and the people. The feeling before a show is always different than the release and contentedness post performance.
We started the 40 mile drive home, laughing and telling stories, I pointed out landmarks from my youth. It’s funny how the gradual deterioration of the things that surround you is almost imperceptible until you point it out to someone else and see it through their eyes. It is a unique phenomenon, a disorienting dissonance as you reconcile the images of younger days with the stark reality of change. For me, this psychological measure of time is both sad and happy, and a great wellspring for poems and song material. As George Bernard Shaw said, “Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad”.
The old car had its closed, aloof trunk towards us, as we approached the gravel road and the big cottonwood tree that marked its final resting place. With a burst of spontaneity, I pulled in and stopped. The sky was perfect, I had a guitar. Let’s take a picture. Luckily for me I had a photographer with a great eye along for the ride. We both snapped pictures of the car and landscape, then Lara took the pictures of me holding my “Be Kind” Dean Resonator, a quirky, now rare guitar my parents gave me in 1985. It fit with the car, the day and me.
The oft said secret of photography is that you have to take a lot of shots to get “the good one”. Digital formats have made this both a blessing and a curse. There are about 20 images from that day, and of course a couple of them stood out. Lara’s photo with me sitting on the hood, looking at the sky as if contemplating the meaning of life, or having indigestion, is the best.
I believe the car is a 1940’s Ford Deluxe. They offered a paint option that year, Garnet Maroon, and there are still hints of that on the hood. I imagine the excitement, as someone pulled into a farm lane with that bold paint and gleaming chrome. The first rides, the last, and all the memories in between.
Looking at the image now, am I an interlocutor, part of the story, or just a conduit between past and present? Since these old things fuel new stories, pictures, songs, writings and tall tales, I will plant my flag firmly in the loam and rye grass next to the old rusty heap and declare we are one.
When we posted the pictures on social media, the comments were rife with “Album Cover!” remarks. Indeed. It was a no-brainer to use the images. The songs on my new album “Autumn Never Knows” sit well in the back seat of the coupe with the memories and ghosts. When it was time to design album artwork, I printed copies of the photos and sent them to my son Reilly Partridge, a talented collage artist (Instagram@blue.walking.man). Reilly wove in other images to create the evocative cover that captured the timelessness of the moment and the songs.
My hope is the listener of the songs and observer of the photo images will feel the love of this creation. To my thinking, the only permanent thing is love As Aristotle said, “Time slurs over everything, let’s all deeds fade, blurs all writings and kills all memories. Exempt are only those which dig into the hearts of men by love”.
I’m guessing that old car will still be there when I’m gone and I hope the same for the songs on this disk. The next time I drive past there, I’m going to put a couple copies of the CD in the car for the ghosts.
(You can get your own copy of the CD on March 1 but you’ll have to wait until 2024 to stream the songs. Sign up on todd-partridge.com to see more photos from this series, and learn more about the process of writing and recording them.)
