I only met U Utah Phillips once, and that was pretty recent. Didn't know how to tell him that I had known him a long damn time. He convinced me to play music again, to take an interest in how we live our lives, to be a pacifist, to memorise stories and poems, to unearth a copy of the Hobo's Hornbook and start to cram all of that wisdom into my brain. He reminded me that I love this country, that I have a voice, that I have a responsibility to think and to act and to bring about change.
I am not that important, in the scheme of things. But I am a better person for what Utah inspired me to do.
He talked about heroes, on one album I have. Well, he is one of mine. Up there with Twain and Lincoln, a person who had compassion, but not at the expense of being cantankerous. Wisdom, but not at the expense of drollery. I mourn his passing, but I know that he is up there caterwauling away, and that pretty soon all the angels will have a Wobbly card.
He died the day after my 35th birthday. I wish I had known. I do not know what I would have done, but I would have done something. He didn't sing his songs so much as he slung them at you, and you didn't have the chance to get out of the way, so you got them all over you, and they were sticky and dirty and full of unpleasant things like truth, so you couldn't help but listen, and take them in, and be changed by them.
I guess the best that I can hope for, in my life, is that I can have the same energy to attack anything that I do, and that I can be as true to what I believe as he was.
Go over easy, Utah. See you on the other side.
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