Off-Topic, or Perhaps Not: New York Minute

Those few who know me well also know that I am deeply romantic and sentimental. This is not always to my credit.

As much I love all sorts of music, and as much of a sucker as I am, there are actually very few songs that will make me cry. The ones that get me are usually deeply moving Irish or Scottish ballads.

Yet this song will inevitably leave me weeping, each and every time I hear it. A fellow once played it on the jukebox at my local watering hole, and in the middle of all sorts of very strong manly men, my buddy looked at me and asked, "Dude, is that a tear?"

Yup. It most certainly was. If I hadn't been trying so hard to hold it all back, you might have seen waterworks. There might have been bawling. It would have been ugly.

I suspect I was at heart somehow a Stoic long before I even knew what Stoicism was. I don't mean the Hipster Stoicism, the smug and cynical stuff you'll easily find in trendy bookstores or on the internet nowadays. I mean the real stuff, where you look at yourself, and then you look at the world, and then you realize you have had it all messed up. You suddenly see the world upside down from the way you saw it before.

You recognize that who you are has nothing to do with all the noise around you. You realize that you are a part of a whole, not a disposable accessory. You begin to see the Divine around you, a world charged with beauty and truth.

And, so very importantly, you accept that everything comes and goes. And you are actually content with all of that, knowing that the impermanence of your situation in no way reduces the importance of your character. Something will have clicked inside you, to allow you to find peace in passing.

A New York minute. What a wonderful phrase. Yes, everything can change in a moment. I need to love and to appreciate what I have, because tomorrow may well be too late.

Don Henley, "New York Minute", from The End of the Innocence (1989)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=58la7YuVTAs

Harry got up
Dressed all in black
Went down to the station
And he never came back
They found his clothing
Scattered somewhere down the track
And he won't be down on Wall Street in the morning

He had a home
The love of a girl
But men get lost sometimes
As years unfurl
One day he crossed some line
And he was too much in this world
But I guess it doesn't matter anymore

In a New York minute
Everything can change
In a New York minute
Things can get pretty strange
In a New York minute
Everything can change
In a New York minute

Lying here in the darkness
I hear the sirens wail
Somebody going to emergency
Somebody's going to jail
You find somebody to love in this world
You better hang on tooth and nail
The wolf is always at the door

In a New York minute
Everything can change
In a New York minute
Things can get little strange
In a New York minute
Everything can change
In a New York minute

And in these days
When darkness falls early
And people rush home
To the ones they love
You better take a fool's advice
And take care of your own
One day they're here
Next day they're gone

I pulled my coat over my shoulders
And took a walk down through the park
The leaves were falling around me
The groaning city in the gathering dark
On some solitary rock
A desperate lover left his mark
Baby, I've changed, please come back

What the head makes cloudy
The heart makes very clear
The days were so much brighter
In the time when she was here
I know there's somebody, somewhere
Make these dark clouds disappear
Until that day, I have to believe
I believe, I believe

In a New York minute
Everything can change
In a New York minute
You can get out of the way
In a New York minute
Everything can change
In a New York minute

Written in 4/2012