Let 2023 Be The Year Of Little Feat And Love Letters

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Living As A Tennessee Lamb

I’d like to say that I understand desire, but in comparison to someone like Lowell George, I’m not sure that I do. You can hear it in his lyrics, of course, but you can also hear it in the way he plays guitar. There’s something out there that he wants, and he’s working towards it with every note.

As the founder and frontman of Little Feat, he wrote and recorded seven albums throughout the 70s and then died right before the decade turned over. He had a fierce habit of binge eating and speedballs, and at 34, his body gave out. Wanting something, yearning for it, and eventually, dying for it—that’s desire.

It’s probably a mistake to romanticize that narrative, but at the same time, staring down the barrel of 40, I’m not sure I have a tight grasp on my own desire and how it fuels my creativity. I write an infrequent newsletter, I tap away at pages of a novel manuscript in furious sprints, and the words never are able to match the emotions sparking them. I also live a stable life with regular visits to the dentists and clean laundry folded away in drawers and a love that puts me to bed at ease every night.

That doesn’t mean I don’t have desire. In the mornings, when I wake up before dawn, I brew coffee and settle into a chair by our front window, reading words in books so beautifully organized that I can’t understand how someone could tie them all together. I feel a pang of longing when I read those passages, because I know I’ll never write something as succinct and powerful. I feel a burning in my chest when I read the praise heaped on a novelist in back cover pull quotes, because I know I’ll never see the same type of adoration for my work.

Then again, I’m not dead. That’s gotta count for something.

The music of Little Feat is almost a dare. The band loops complicated rhythms and virtuoso playing over simple song structures and straightforward lyrics. What reads as backyard barbecue music eventually unravels the more you scrutinize the details. Put on Dixie Chicken at the pig roast and what you’ll eventually hear through the good time jams is Lowell George searching for the ease and joy that you’re living in. He wants what you have, and he doesn’t know how to find it.

The songs are maudlin, with George’s slide guitar as a crying punctuation to every line sung. Even the upbeat ones. “Fat Man In the Bathtub” lilts and sways in syncopated bursts as the narrator cries out for a woman who’s spurned him. On “Two Trains,” the narrator is stuck in a moment where the woman he loves might be in love with his friend, too, all delivered over a soft, toe-tapping shuffle. Almost every song follows the same pattern, hovering right in the moments before love is secure and weighted, holding your feet back to the ground. But it’s “Roll Um Easy” that really captures George’s desire.

An acoustic ballad occasionally layered with big background vocals and slide guitar, it’s a song of devotion from a worn out drifter to a woman who calms his soul. Lines like “Take my independence / With no apprehension, no tension” peel back the facade of the song’s narrator, who bears enough resemblance to George to assume it’s a truthful tale told. And it’s a great vehicle to dissect the idea of desire and how it’s directed.

I want to believe his desire for art drives him, that it’s his need for recognition and creation that fuels his songs. I’m trying to read between the lines and find a secret code that explains it all. It’s easier than that: George broadcasts his desire all over every song: it’s a yearning for love and understanding, every time. Every note he wrote, every lyric penned, every chord progression serves one purpose.

That means my desire is misdirected. It means I’m not channeling what I know and want, but instead, I’m translating those feelings into a pit of inadequacy. I tell myself I want to see my name in print, but saying what? I’m not giving the world anything in these words I’m stringing together for attention.

So maybe it is just as easy as writing a love letter.

I’m not like George. I’m not looking for a love to ground me. I’ve found it. And those moments he sings about, the ones suspended in the excitement of uncertainty—those are the moments that electrify a connection. I felt those moments, five years ago, when I was bitter and soft and looking for a way out. When I felt care and understanding for the first time in years, and looked into the eyes of someone who wanted to care for me as much I did her.

I still feel those moments in the morning, when I bring her coffee in bed and see the peace in her face when she looks at me. Before the day starts, before time has its demands of us, there’s a brief window where I know I’m choosing this love everyday and this love is also choosing me.

After five years it’s easy to peel away from those butterflies, to settle into something quieter and steady. It’s easy to eat your feelings and deny that desire plays a role in your schedule. There’s work to do. A dog to walk. The folded laundry doesn’t get into drawers on its own. You show less of yourself even when you know comfort is a weak poison.

As much as you might not want to, it’s easy to take someone else’s body heat for granted. A small hug in the kitchen, and little squeeze as you pass in the hallway. You get lazy and the love notes become short phrases spoken aloud, verification that a love exists and is shared as a fact.

That’s its own facade, in a way, because desire never leaves. The short fires that spark between fingertips entwined never go away, even if you pretend it’s something concrete and permanent. The jolt up your spine when someone wraps their arms around you never feels less electric. I can still remember that first time, in the cafe, with her arms around me, whispering into my ear Well, what are we supposed to do? 

The sun on her face still melts my will, and seeing her shoulders in silhouette through the dark causes me to crumble. I’m a mess around her no matter how strong I think I am, no matter how cemented my face has become. And all I have to do is remember to tell her all of this, to find that release and live suspended.

I don’t know if Lowell George ever found what he was looking for; I know I did.

So let his music ring out all of next year, as a reminder for me to live in the deepness of my own desire. Let 2023 be a year for love letters and finding those moments that hover still in the air.

I see the picture of us pinned up over my desk, from the photobooth. I see your smirking face smashed into mine, kissing my cheek, and the dumb smile I can’t help from cracking directly into the camera. In the next panel, I see the change that came over us, as I turn to kiss you back, and the dumb joy falls gently into a clear moment of trust, warmth, and love. I can still feel the energy of your lips against mine, a snapshot of surrender.

I surrender into your love everyday, and I now promise to tell you about it every time I do.

I love you, Ashley. Here’s to the New Year.

Artwork by Ashley Elander Strandquist. You can view her illustration work here and check out her printing business here.