I Will Not Buy (4:43)

Oh to be alive on the Friday of a long weekend. And in New York City with its springtime gorgeous weather. Dare to rise with the sun, and with Walt Whitman, and with Henry Miller, and with Norman Mailer, and with Allen Ginsberg, and with Bob Dylan.

There is something very Caribbean about the beginning of this song. Listen to the way the bass leads in the timpani and organ. I don't know about you, but it immediately places me in a sunny place. Perhaps it is because I associate this song to the summer days of my youth, drinking keg beer and doing shots of Jack Daniels while playing volleyball and swimming at a friends house. Music evokes memories in all of us, and we all hold each of them equally as dear. Personally, this Grateful Dead tune takes me to the summertime Kid Rock sings about in All Summer Long (right along side Sweet Home Alabama, funny enough. But doesn't everyone associate that song with summertime youth?).

But this morning there was an amplified electric hum in New York. I know New York City is known as the "nucleus" of energy for all it's fame and glory, but specifically today there was added voltage.

It's a mysterious remedy. I can't help but know, I too, will get by.

Perhaps it is because it's the dawn of Memorial Day Weekend. Or maybe it is the promise of great weather ahead. Or perhaps it is a result of the hundreds of sailors who currently grace our latitudinal avenues and longitudinal streets in their pristine white pride uniforms. Whatever the cause, humanity was in the air today.

Even me, after reading last night's post, I decided to shift my attitude and seek for that lining of silver and juxtaposing touch of grey. Perhaps I was dreaming with a Grateful Dead soundtrack, I don't know? But I did wake with the melody in my head this morning, so I had to play it. Do any of you dream in song?

Or maybe it was the fact that I was stuck at home feeling sorry for myself last night--worrying about money and rent and groceries. Sorry that I feel that way. The only thing to ask is: What are those items in the face of breath, sunlight, heartbeat, and smiles from strangers? What is income when helping a stranger to navigate a foreign city?

Case in point--a friend today flipped me a Craigslist posting from a young man thanking "the kind couple who witnessed [his] getting dumped in Prospect Park." Apparently, these two strangers went as far as to bring him a flower after she [his ex] abandoned him. The reprieved went on to write: "Sometimes strangers can actually give you what you need better than those to whom you consciously give your heart." What wisdom! What truth! This is the general feeling of New York today. Who needs prescription pills when you can help a mother get her stroller through the door?

Switch into the minor. Did you hear it? The entire key of the song slides up half a scale. It's a subtlety that weaves its way into most rock/pop tunes. It's a lesson we all need to remember It's a little reminder to the listener not to fall victim to redundancy, a reminder we can all use every now and again.

So many great moments on this 'one-life-to-live' stage and most people let them pass by en route in order to not miss the last episode of Lost. Makes me chuckle at the irony of the pop-culture craze. Who, exactly, are the ones lost? The characters in the show or the millions staring into the screen with their jaws dropped wide and pupils dilated so more pharmaceutical companies can inform them of all the diseases they don't know they have. They are the only ones who can afford to host commercials at such a price. Them and insurance companies. Buy prescription drugs is the message. New York energy can't save you, nor can a stranger in the park. You are depressed. You need pills. What is that saying about our society? It is scary to think that 22 million people tuned into a program and the only industries that could afford the advertising space were insurance and prescription drugs.

The only thing there is to say, every silver lining's got a touch of grey. I will get by. Somehow, I will get by. I have never heard of a man dying from broke. Ha! There has to be a catalyst somewhere along the way. Maybe I should start selling drugs like the old traveling medicine man who skips from town to town selling voodoo cures to unidentified ailments. Is it any different than what is being done today by major corporations? Scam artists finding creative ways to gyp local-folk out of their hard earned money and talking in tongues above them. Its patronizing. I don't need your drugs. I don't need your television plots. And I certainly don't need your insurance. I will survive.

It's a happy song, peppered with cynicism. Notice it's not a silver lining, but a touch of grey. As if to say, its not that you need to go looking for the good in everything, but just that the bad just aint all that bad. You're not sick. Insurance won't make you happy. And things are gonna be alright.

Oh well, a touch of grey. Kinda suits me anyway. I would rather have a touch of grey in flannel suit hanging in my closet that I never have to wear than a colorful Ermenegildo Zegna tie that I have to put on every morning.

"Touch of Grey" is a song about taking your lumps and riding them out. It's telling us that you aren't sick like the TV ads will sell you or not to worry about the future like the insurance companies brainwash you into believing. Its about being human, like the couple in prospect park, and the young men and women of our armed forces celebrating Fleet Week in New York City and the family barbecues scattered all over the country this Memorial Day Weekend.

There is something extremely clever in the way that The Dead changes the chorus from the isolated "I" to the collective "we" at the end of the song. It's as if Jerry Garcia recognizes the fate of the whole world is beyond his own troubles. In typical blues fashion, the troubles of the lone troubadour are not personalized at all, but mutual. It's not just about me and what I have to do to survive, it's about all of us. Oil spills and collapsing European markets. Middle Eastern conflicts and ignored genocides.

We will get by. I don't know how or when, but we always have. We will get by.