I first became enamored of the song around 1977 when I
heard quite a bit of the Allmans, and then in 1979 I put it on a tape because I
wanted the reminder of all that urgency: “Time goes by like pourin’ rain, and
much faster things.” A death close to me had opened up a feeling of time being
short and life utterly precarious that this song evokes quite notably. “You don’t
need no gypsy to tell you why / Ya can’t let one precious day to slip by.”
And, yeah, it was easy for me to get behind such urgency in
my twenties. I wanted to get on with it. Didn’t even want to waste my time
going to college, sitting in classes. It was all about trying to get on a fast train that would speed along to something more worthwhile, whatever
that might be. “Look outside yourself, and if you don’t see what you want / Maybe sometimes then ya don’t / But leave your mind alone—and just get
high.” As Rimbaud might say, “Ha, I’ve taken too much of that!” So that’s where
a lot of time got wasted: getting wasted. And then not.
Well, by and by, way after
many years have gone
And all the war freaks
die off, leaving us alone
We’ll raise our
children in peace the way we can
It’s up to you and me,
brother, to try and try again
Many years have gone, alright, since I was into this song
(though I admit I’ve started listening to the Allmans a bit recently with the
Mobile Fidelity release of their first album), and, though the war freaks haven’t
noticeably declined, I can say that I put in my time to “raise children the way we can”—not that
that’s wasting time, but it sure does take up time—but maybe it’s time to “try again” with some other means of “wasting
time,” since, unlike Gregg, I don’t know what activity isn’t a waste of time.
Or maybe it’s better to see it as “killing time.” “Waste” sounds like it had
some potential to be something but you squandered it. And, sure, I do feel that
way about the times I’ve lived through, often enough. It’s just that I don’t
know, even if I had gold records or writing awards, if I’d feel that I’d done
anything more than “kill time”—which means filling the hours with activities
that wear them down.
Which brings us back to the verse spoken to Miss Sally who
seems to be standing around crying about nothing to do. “Go step yourself
outside, look up at the stars above / Go on downtown, baby, and find somebody
to love / Meanwhile I ain’t wastin’ time no more.” The point seems to be that
she can go contemplate nature—those ever-inspiring stars—or go find a lover, or
maybe just someone to love (could even be a pet, I guess) but meanwhile . .
. That little word said a lot to me,
back then. Like, once we’ve had enough with contemplating what is and after we’ve
experienced the great odyssey to, with, and for someone else, or wasting time trying to get with someone else, we might come
back to something else to turn our time to. I mean, some people really are a waste of time. Get on with what you gotta do. Don't mean to be brusque, but I almost chose for today Gregg's “It's Not My Cross to Bear” from the first ABB album because that's a line I say sometimes, and, to alter my man Scrooge, it's enough for a man to know his own particular cross to bear without worrying about someone else's.
So hear us now, we ain’t
wastin’ time no more / ’Cause time rolls by like hurricanes / Runnin’ after
subway trains / And don’t forget the pourin’ rain—and the way he pours it
on for “pour-re-rorin” let’s us know it’s really pouring (like it did
yesterday), enough to fill up that dish outside the window, if you know what I
mean . . .
