March CommQuote

A lyric from Mark Knopfler off his latest "album" Get Lucky is our feature for this month's quote. The song expresses a simple longing for life as lived before the car and before television. Both are indirectly impugned by the speaker's nostalgia for other forms of leisure.

Before Gas And TV

Before gas and TV
Before people had cars
We'd sit round the fires
Pass around a guitar
Remembering songs
When my daddy was home
He'd play along
On the spoons and a comb

We'd go with the flow
When the weather was fine
Sometimes we'd go
Collecting scrap iron
Then we'd sit round the fires
Pass a bottle of wine
And the tales of the road
Since time out of mind

If heaven's like this
Well, that's okay with me
Where the living is fine
And living is free
If heaven's like this
Well, then here's where I'll be
On the edge of the field
On the edge of the world
Before gas and TV.

--Mark Knopfler (2009, Get Lucky)