April 12, 2006 - 8:58
It was one of a handful of songs that my Dad would play habitually on his guitar, it was just household noise to me. I remember one time though when I was rapt, listening to it in my basement bedroom on Central Canyon. It came to me from upstairs through a network of pipes, and somehow this format made the ascending strain painfully pretty. So I began to cry, but I remember distincly the moment I was crying not for the song; but for how lonely it will feel to hear this after he dies. I must have been 10, and it's the first recountable instance of my tendency to make present pleasures bittersweet.
Maybe I remember it so clearly because it's been doubly cemented in my mind: once in thinking it, and once for saying it to my Mother in the craft store, when Blackbird came on rotation over the loud speaker. I sighed audibly, and remarked: "Won't this song be really sad after Dad dies?". She acted taken aback, almost offended, and replied that she "didn't want to think about it." I remember feeling real dejection at that response.
My inclination to wear my new heavy-heart on my sleeve was dashed.