Lyrics and Life

By Caitlin Ward

Gone Fishin’
Louis Armstrong and Bing Crosby

I’ll tell you why I can’t find you
Every time I go out to your place . . .

You gone fishin’ / Well how you know?
Well there’s a sign upon your door / Uh-huh
Gone fishin’ / I’m real gone man
You ain’t workin’ anymore / Could be
There’s your hoe out in the sun
Where you left a row half done
You claim that hoein’ ain’t no fun / Well I can prove it
You ain’t got no ambition

Gone fishin’ by a shady wady pool / Shangrila, really la
I’m wishin’ I could be that kind of fool / Should I twist your arm?
I’d say no more work for mine / Welcome to the club
On my door I’d hang a sign
Gone fishin’ instead of just a-wishin’

Papa Bing / Yeah Louis?
I stopped by your place a time or two lately
And you aren’t home either
Well, I’m a busy man Louis. I got a lotta deals cookin’
I was probably tied up at the studio
You weren’t tied up you dog
You was just plain old . . .

Gone fishin’
There’s a sign upon your door / Pops, don’t blab it around, will you?
Gone fishin’ / Keep it shady, I got me a big one staked out
Mmm, you ain’t workin’ anymore / I don’t have to work, I got me a piece of Gary
Cows need milkin’ in the barn / I have the twins on that detail, they each take a side
But you just don’t give a darn / Give ‘em four bits a cow and hand lotion
You just never seem to learn / Man, you taught me
You ain’t got no ambition / You’re convincin’ me

Gone fishin’
Got your hound dog by your side / that’s old Cindy-Lou goin’ with me
Gone fishin’
Fleas are bitin’ at his hide / Get away from me boy, you bother me

Mmm, folks won’t find us now because
Mister Satch and Mister Cros
We gone fishin’ instead of just a-wishin’

I have this habit of naming things I own. My car is called Charlie, my iPod is Clement, my computer is Malachi. In a strange way, this has made me much less prone to consumerism. Naming things imbues them with a personality whether you want it to, or not. My iPod, for example, is not in good straits. Clement is on his second screen, the first one having cracked when it hit the cement floor at a karaoke club. This second screen has cracked, too, but it’s not as devastating as it was last time, and I’m not sure I can replace it a second time, anyway. Part of me thinks I should give up on him because, at 32 GB, his capacity is not big enough for my music collection, and he’s getting on to be three years old. That’s geriatric in terms of electronic equipment these days. But then, the other part of me knows he’s Clement, the sardonic French iPod. What’s he to do when I get a new, shinier piece of electronic equipment?

Well, he probably won’t care, because he’s a hunk of metal and wire and is not prone to thoughts on anything, let alone feelings of abandonment. But see, I will care. And so, with my iPod at least, I’ve managed not to buy into the idea that I need something bigger and better and newer. Clement is just fine, and he’ll remain fine until the day he properly gives up the ghost — or, as in the case with my last iPod, Giles, he gets recalled because there were reports of that particular model bursting into flames. I cared about Giles, but not to the point where I was going to let him burn my house down.

I recognize this is all rather silly, but in some strange way, it does make me a more sensible person. I don’t covet expensive electronics, because I have a decided affection for the ones I have. And to my mind, this is a good thing. Many of our electronics use ill-gotten compounds and are produced under harrowing circumstances. I don’t think I could get away without a cellphone these days, but I’m not going to get a new one until the one I have has completely ceased working.

I’ve been thinking about consumption, lately — probably because I’ve been thinking about the way the western world works. September is a particularly busy time of the year for me. Though I work a fair amount of overtime at certain points, I don’t really mind. I know that the craziness only lasts a few months of the year, and I like my work.

But then, I wonder at the people who work that hard for the whole of the year. For some, as in the case of the working poor, it’s not a choice. For others, it’s a passion for their work, which I can understand. But for others still — and frankly, quite a few — it’s a means of making money, or getting ahead, and I’m not sure if that’s the best course of action. It’s as if we work hard to get ahead to get a raise to buy nice things that we end up being too tired to enjoy. It wreaks havoc on the environment and the economies of other countries, and we’re not even happy about all the stuff we have, because there’s probably a new and cooler iPhone coming out next month and we’ll have to work a whole bunch to buy it to add it to our fleet of exciting phones.

I think we forget how much more valuable time is than many of those material things. Sometimes when it’s this time of year — or an equally busy time — I remember the year I couldn’t find a steady job. I was always on the point of being completely broke, but I had just enough for what I needed. What I did have was time. My mom had only recently got sick at that point, so she had a lot of time, too. I remember driving to get coffee with her every day around four o’clock. I remember long walks and reading a lot. I love my job, but when my schedule goes nuts I miss that time I had with my family. It didn’t look like I was doing much to the outside world, and I’m not going to pretend that time in my life wasn’t hard, too, but there was something much more simple then.

I know it’s just a pop song from the late 1950s, but I wonder if Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong had more of a point than the song might initially suggest. Maybe I’m a bit cynical because I am quite tired at this time of year, but I’m far from convinced being able to afford a lot of stuff actually makes anyone happy in and of itself. Instead, we could be gone fishin.’ That year I was broke, I got used to not having things, and so I got used to not wanting things. I didn’t have to talk myself out of getting a new phone or a new iPod or a new computer, because it just wasn’t going to happen. But more importantly, I didn’t mind. I had enough, and I feel like if we all (myself included) could just be happy with “enough,” we might be able to sort some of the world’s problems out a lot faster.

Either way, come the end of September, there may well be a Gone Fishin’ sign on my office door. I’ll leave the milking to someone else for a day or two.

Ward is a freelance writer and aspiring documentary filmmaker based in Saskatoon. You can find her short bursts of insight and frustration at http://www.twitter.com/newsetofstrings