Friday's Grief Song, 4.28.23
the medicine of rock bottom
“I love my mother. I love my father. I love my sisters too.”
When I first heard this song in my mid 20s, I felt like Bill Callahan was singing directly too me. I am 1 of 6 sisters. I had moved from South Carolina to California leaving behind some hard years of hard drinking, self-destruction, and toxic relationships. Dominant culture was already having its way with me. Leaving the South saved me but also broke my heart. This song sang to that rift.
But later this song came to feel like another love song to the distance between the animate world and the industrialized one. I listened to it while I grieved a thick metal barrier between me in a parking lot and an unruly field of sedges and grasses in Charleston, S.C. Though the lyrics don’t overtly express this love to the animate more than human world, it very well could. There is grief inherent to the song’s composition, lilting guitar, and Callahan’s deep melodic voice (as well as its quick waltz tempo). Now I hear the love in this song for the mother/father/sisters as any of my more than human kin. “I owe it all to you” could as easily be sung to the river itself Callahan has risen from, whose rocky bottom is that familiar metaphor for any of us who’ve danced/battled with and been seduced and addicted by/to drugs and alcohol and made it through. “I owe it all to you” could as easily be sung to Hawk, Horse, Cedar, Cow, Milk, Wheat, Oats, Salmon, Nettle, Rose, Yarrow, Oak or Maple.
And damn how he goes out in the ending of this song…
Listen to Rock Bottom Riser by Smog here on YouTube or here on Spotify.
Rock Bottom Riser
Smog
Written by: William Rahr Callahan
Album: A River Ain't Too Much To Love
Released: 2005
I love my mother
I love my father
I love my sisters too
I bought this guitar
To pledge my love
To pledge my love to you
I am a rock
Bottom riser
And I owe it all to you
I am a rock
Bottom riser
And I owe it all to you
I saw a gold ring
At the bottom of the river
Glinting at my foolish heart
So my foolish heart
Had to go diving
Diving, diving, diving
Into the murk
And from the bottom of the river
I looked up for the sun
Which had shattered in the water
And the pieces were raining down
Like gold rings
That passed through my hands
As I thrashed and I grabbed
I started rising, rising, rising
I left my mother
I left my father
Left my sisters too
Left them standing on the banks
And they pulled me out
Of this mighty, mighty, mighty river
I am a rock
Bottom riser
And I owe it all to you
I am a rock
Bottom riser
And I owe it all to you
I love my mother
I love my father
I love my sisters too
I bought this guitar
To pledge my love
To pledge my love to you