I Remember Everything
Music: I Remember Everything
Artist: John Prine
Shared by: Win for Jude
It’s a great title and I am immediately hooked. I want to hear more. It's what a title is meant to do. My thoughts turn immediately to Judy.
It starts with the word “Alright”. I understand this. Often I sing my own songs about Jude and this is about taking a big sigh as you know you have to control your emotions for what is to follow and for the benefit of your audience. Then gentle guitar is followed by Prines’ beautiful soothing voice. He starts by remembering his career.
“I’m transported back to that moment in our relationship and Jude’s beautiful smile.”
But very soon he is talking about his lady “The way you turned and smiled on me, On the night that we first met” and now I’m transported back to that moment in our relationship and Jude’s beautiful smile. A smile that so many people acknowledge as their abiding memory of her. What a way to be remembered.
“And I remember every night, Your ocean eyes of blue” and again I am reminded of my beautiful girl and her smiling eyes. If in fact I ever need reminding.
“How I miss you in the morning light, Like roses miss the dew”. This is the overriding message of the song and is repeated many times. Now I am thinking about the song I wrote in a form of a letter to Jude and how I “lay the letter down in the early morning dew, for the angels to find and bring it back to you”.
I am aghast at how this great songwriter is using the same metaphor as me. I spend some time thinking about dew and how this magical phenomena appears in the morning to help nature on its way. And of course I miss Jude every morning as I pull up the blinds so they hang the way she always wanted them to be.
The middle section of the song is very personal to Prine and has some interesting ideas “Got no future in my happiness” which I can empathise with without feeling precisely that way myself. It also has some lovely imagery for your imagination to ride away on “Swimming pools of butterflies, that slipped right through the net”.
The song ends with Prine repeating “How I miss you in the morning light, Like roses miss the dew” twice. As the last note gently fades I am again thinking the same thoughts as I did at the start.
Can I remember everything, and then a little anxiety about what I may have forgotten.
Quite simply a great song that delivers so much of what I need when I close my eyes and press “play”. Thank you John Prine.
“I Remember Everything” was the last song recorded by John Prine before he passed away in 2020.