Songs You Write Before You Die: TVZ

"A Song For" by Townes Van Zandt

Townes Van Zandt died on New Year’s Day in 1997, at 52 years old. He spent his final few years wracked in pain, mostly unable to work as he struggled with the medical complications brought on by thirty-odd years of hard living. His final studio album, A Deeper Blue, was released in 1994. While he managed to hang on for a few more years - Townes was one of the toughest motherfuckers to ever live - the album is shot through with a dark, creeping awareness of his coming death.

This is nowhere more vivid than “A Song For,” one of the finest efforts in Townes’ entire catalogue. Townes’ widow, Jeanene Van Zandt, is said to have discovered the lyrics to this song jotted down on a napkin in their Texas home. When she asked Townes if it was a song, he said “That ain’t no song. That’s a suicide note.”

Ribbons of love, please keep me true sane
Until I reach home on the morrow
Never, never to wander again
I'm weak and I'm weary of sorrow

London to Dublin, Australia to Perth
I gazed at your skies, I tasted your earth
Sung out my heart for what it was worth
Never again shall I ramble

Here Townes reflects on his life as a troubadour; reflects on its end. We find him in a contemplative mode, stripped of his rakish humor and clever wordplay. Even his voice - which was strong at its peak, albeit never authoritative like Cash or Jennings - comes through drained of its normal twang, replaced by a reedy exhaustion that seeps into the listener.

Now as I stumble and reel to my bed
All that I've done, all that I've said
Means nothing to me, I'd soon as be dead
All of this world be forgotten

No words of comfort, no words of advice
Nothing to offer a stranger
Gone the love, gone the spite
It just doesn't matter no longer

My sky's getting far, the ground's getting close
My self going crazy, the way that it does
I'll lie on my pillow and sleep if I must
Too late to wish I'd been stronger
Too late to wish I'd been stronger

The message is so clear that to attempt “analysis” almost feels disrespectful, besides the point. If you listen to this song - if you really listen - you know exactly what he’s saying, and why he’s saying it. The song confirms our deepest fears about death. That it comes for us all; that there is nothing in the end; that our lives have been pointless.

Townes doesn’t offer any comfort, to himself or to his listeners. One wonders how this version of the singer-songwriter might have interacted with his younger self, who wrote that to live is to fly. But perhaps he would have been too tired to speak much at all.