Friends in Low Places

Wherein I overthink Garth Brooks

I almost called this, “All I Want to Do Is Have Some Fun” because I was going to write about having fun. Then I looked up the Sheryl Crow song of the same name. Here it is if you don’t know it.

I don’t want to make the song sound deeper than it is, but after checking the lyrics, I’m compelled to write about Garth Brooks instead.

For a while, I described myself as a “Speculative Nonfiction” writer, a phrase I thought I coined. As it turns out, it’s a real and serious kind of writing, which is too bad because that’s not how I meant it. For me, speculative nonfiction was the way I described my very conscious decision to use reality as a launchpad and disinterest as fuel.

For example, with enough time and effort, I could find out what Garth Brooks has said about “Friends in Low Places,” over the years. I don’t really care, though, because that’s not the point. The point is my wondering more than it is discovering the Truth.

“Friends in Low Places” easily could be a Tom Waits song. Instead, it’s more of a Bruce Springsteen song.

Let’s take a listen:

This is a song about and from the perspective of a person who has drunk himself into unreliable narrator status. For all we know, he’s sitting at the bar imagining what he would do if a woman ever dumped him for a rich guy. In fact, that seems the most plausible explanation of the song. It reeks of self-pity, paranoia, and cheap beer.

“Friends in Low Places” is about a guy who keeps lowering the bar for acceptable behavior and daring people to call him on it. We’re supposed to feel bad for or maybe repulsed by him. We’re not supposed to identify with him.

Conflating classlessness with authenticity just bleeds from our culture. No one sees themselves as a mannerless, drunken asshole; they’re all anti-heroes making a point about how society screwed them.

We all know people like this.

I bring it up because I wonder what Garth feels about how this thoroughly depressing song got over so many people’s heads just by being upbeat. I mean, he’s gotta sing that song, what?, 100 times a year?

He’s an artist, which means he understands all he can do is make stuff. People will like it or not and interpret it in their own ways. But, still, what’s it like to have 30,000 people missing the point of your art to your face day in and day out? There’s nothing he can (or should) do about it, but it’s an interesting phenomenon.

The idiots who run my town (and really every idiot who needs to get dumb people to vote for him) play “Born in the U.S.A.” to drum up fervor. I feel like “Friends in Low Places” could be the “B” side of that, enchanting the gullible against their interests, assuring them they’re misunderstood and unfairly ostracized by societal prejudice.

There seems to be a creeping need among Americans to be a member of a persecuted minority. So many of us are fighting to get into a box that explains our life and how we behave, excusing our shortcomings all the while. It’s one reason Garth Brooks has dominated my thinking recently.

I want to say that at least a third of America suffers from “Friends in Low Places” syndrome, screaming along to words we don’t understand because they make our lives feel legitimate. We don’t want to be right so much as we want to justify being wrong.

It’s become something I can’t unsee, so I’d love an alternate take on it if you have one.

Just to bring this full circle, the reason I didn’t use the Sheryl Crow song for a title is it’s also depressing as hell, and I genuinely do want to have more fun.

Keep the Faith,

Tony

PostScript

Before listening to the Sheryl Crow song, I conceived this as a brief note to let you know I’m going to try and lighten up and share the fun things I find more often. There’s a postcard project I’ll be launching in the next few weeks that I’m pretty excited about. I buy old postcards from junk shops. I’ve started researching the people and places on them and there’s some kooky stuff worth sharing.

I want to invite you to visit the Notes and Chat sections of this Substack because that’s where a lot of these stories start.

I also have an irregular serendipity series tracking how my life intersects with my crossword puzzle, which is fun.

I wrote about a mummy for work earlier this year. Back in the 1800s, a funeral director over-embalmed an indigent. No one came to claim the body, so he eventually became something of a town oddity. They’ve decided to bury him in a dignified service.

My wife and I will be heading out to Reading, Pa., to cover the event for the magazine. We haven’t had an adventure like this in a couple of years and it’s exciting. We really are a pretty good team.

Anyway, I had a flash that this could be my Fear and Loathing: “We were somewhere around West Chester on the edge of Philadelphia when the drugs began to take hold.”

An LSD-laced odyssey through central Pennsylvania junk shops and alternative eateries ensues with scant mention of the event I was sent to cover.

TR