Take This Tune

Posted: Monday, December 06, 2010 by Travis Cody in
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My pal Jamie from Duward Discussion has reintroduced her wonderful meme.  Take This Tune provides a musical prompt each week, usually a video with the song lyrics.  The task is to write something inspired by the song or something in the lyrics.

This week's prompt is the song I Am A Town, by Mary Chapin Carpenter.  Jamie writes of the song...
This wonderful song by Mary Chapin Carpenter is about all the small towns that we once knew that now are dying or changing beyond recognition.  We flee from them, remember them, hope to find them again as imagined, and miss them when they disappear.  They are hopes and dreams both fulfilled or dashed.

There's no place that evokes that kind of emotional connection for me.  I don't have any particular allegiances to a physical location.  There is no figurative "going home" that means anything to me.  None of my family is left in the place where I grew up and graduated from high school. 

In fact, I've often found inhabitants of small towns to be suspicious of strangers, resistant to change or progress, and generally unwelcoming.  Communities can sometimes be very provincial in their values. 

So I'm not sure what to write for this particular prompt.  It isn't often that Jamie stumps me.  Usually I can find some kind of inspiration in the song or lyrics.

Oh well.  Maybe next week.

6 comments:

  1. Akelamalu says:
    06 December, 2010 02:42

    I moved to this town 48 years ago so I guess I can call it home, though I still have an affinity with the town where I was born.

  1. DrillerAA says:
    06 December, 2010 04:33

    I don't have any connection to my birth town other than the fact that my parents are now buried there. It is still a small town. We have watched our current place of residence grow out of being a true small town over the past 25 years. The growth has been both good and not so good. I do miss some of the true small town attributes, but I appreciate the new opportunities that have come to town as well. You just can't have it both ways, regardless of what the Chamber of Commerce tries to tell you.

  1. Coco says:
    06 December, 2010 05:11

    I grew up in a tiny fishing village on the Bay of Fundy ... the main sources of employment there were the sawmill, the gypsum mine and, as you might guess, fishing. The sawmill is now a shadow of its former self, the gypsum mine is closed, and who knows how long the fishing will hold out?

    I grew up and moved away, but my parents still lived there so my hometown remained part of my life. Now, although I don't live there, I have chosen to give back to that community by taking a teaching position in the local school.

  1. Charles Gramlich says:
    06 December, 2010 06:17

    Small towns can be wonderful to insiders and not so much to outsiders. IN addition, remaining an insider in a small town takes some effort and sometimes supressing one's natural wishes.

  1. Durward Discussion says:
    06 December, 2010 06:55

    Even in not saying anything, you still come up with something meaningful to say. I gotta get suggestions from people if anyone wants to throw some my way.

  1. Mike Golch says:
    06 December, 2010 08:52

    Cleveland was a small town once long ago. many areas were towns in their own right that became greater Cleveland,one such town that got annexed is Ohio City now part of the west side of Cleveland.

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