• ABOUT
  • WORDS
  • BLOG
  • MUSIC
  • BIO
  • CONTACT
  • …  
    • ABOUT
    • WORDS
    • BLOG
    • MUSIC
    • BIO
    • CONTACT
  • ABOUT
  • WORDS
  • BLOG
  • MUSIC
  • BIO
  • CONTACT
  • …  
    • ABOUT
    • WORDS
    • BLOG
    • MUSIC
    • BIO
    • CONTACT

The Evening of My Best Day

Time is a blur in Rickie Lee Jones’s song, “The Evening of My Best Day.” She sings it in a sleepy little girl’s voice. On some of the lines, she lets the air out of the balloon early, the way kids sometimes do. The orchestrations are as delicate as a paper doll — nylon string guitar, piano, cello, a little synth, woven together seamlessly. They’re easily overlooked, but that’s only because they’re perfect. The song itself is so unassuming I nearly missed it. But Rickie Lee Jones saw fit to name an entire album after this song, and she is a great songwriter, one of my favorites. So I went back, and gave it a second listen. And a third, and many more after that, until I developed a personal relationship with this song. I have shared it with more friends than I can count. 

“The Evening of My Best Day” is a short story with only a few enigmatic plot details sketched in. The listener can’t help can’t help bringing their own experiences to the party. My version of the story is that the narrator is a grown woman, reaching back in time with a message for her little girl self. She finds the girl sitting quietly in her mother’s bedroom, in the aftermath of a bad incident at school:

The little girl struggles, mostly in silence. School is a war zone, and on this particular day she made a stand, and the grownups took notice. They laugh about the loneliness of your awkward attack. A very tough day, indeed. In the present, many years later, she has found something within herself, something to do with self-love, and she wants to share it with her childhood self: 

Then, after a brief musical interlude that’s slightly dark, just on the edge of grace, come the last, beautiful verses:

The song is a love letter, with the healing message that things will get better. She sings those lines, “It’s a good life from now on,” across the decades, in a voice just the right size for a little girl’s soul to hear it. “A good life, look ahead. The sky is almost blue.” 

The sky is almost blue. The song describes a moment of peace and self-sufficiency in this woman’s healing journey. The road ahead looks good now, but the journey isn’t complete. It can never be complete, in fact. And today isn’t a perfect day; it’s her best day. 

I would love for this blog to turn into an ongoing conversation, so feel free to add your own thoughts to the comments window, below. And if you know anyone else who might like the discussion, please forward on to them as well. If you want similar blogs as that, please subscribe below for my Bi-weekly newsletter which will include future blogs and announcements.

 

 

Previous
I Dance and Dance and Smile and Smile
Next
Freedom From Within
 Return to site
Cancel
All Posts
×

Almost done…

We just sent you an email. Please click the link in the email to confirm your subscription!

OK