It opens: “The Mississippi Delta was shining like a national guitar / I am following the river down the highway through the cradle of the civil war.” That is pure poetry, evocative and beautiful. And it establishes the multi-layered themes: traveling with the one who loves your most truly (your son) on a pilgrimage to the roots of rock and roll, seeing the country that tore itself apart and slowly (very slowly) began to heal itself over the centuries, and thinking about your own world being blown apart.
It’s all perfectly captured in one of the most devastating verses in the history of pop music:
She comes back to tell me she’s gone
As if I didn’t know that
As if I didn’t know my own bed
As if I’d never noticed the way she brushed her hair from her forehead
And she said losing love is like a window in your heart
Everybody sees you’re blown apart
Everybody sees the wind blow
The deep, intense sadness. The slight sense of bemusement and disbelief. The realization that you knew all along but just couldn’t quite admit it. And collapse of the walls that you’ve desperately tried to sustain between your interior self and the cruel world outside.
There aren’t answers here, but there really couldn’t be. The important thing is the searching, not what you will find.
Apologies to all the other wonderful songs about Tennessee – of which there are many – but this is truly one of the greatest songs of all-time.