The following sleeve notes are extracts from an interview with Dodie
(Soul Trader) Gordon at his retreat in a small fishing village in the NE of
Scotland toward the end of the last century.
I wrote this song when I was twenty four. My student days were over and I
had entered the real world as a school teacher in the slum schools of
Edinburgh. I had been playing around with sex, drugs and rock and roll as
people did in those days but I had also been sticking my head into Eastern
religions in the hope that they might have something to offer other than
western style rationality, hedonism and braindeadery.
I was still looking for THE ANSWER with part of my head but there are
signs that I was copping on to the insights of the Prajnaparamita where I
see the road that never has an end and beyond that to the state where
I
know there is no highway.
But I lace my boots regardless
And I lift my pack with purpose
As I move along the never ending highway.
It was going to take many years to get to grips with the notion that there
is no highway. The songs in this collection record some of the twists and
turns along the way.
It was a long time before I came to understand what Woody Guthrie meant
when he said:
You gotta walk that lonesome valley
You gotta walk it by yourself
Nobody here can walk it for you
You gotta walk it by yourself.
I have been involved with a lot of women in my time. In the early days
there was the feeling that maybe it would last but as I got older I
realised that it would do no good. This is a song for a young American
lass that I hung around with in Jamaica. Some people live in dreams of
yesterday and are happy to tend the cabbages and keep a tidy home. But
that was not for me, I was for moving on:
I wrote this song towards the end of my time in Jamaica. By day I was a
respectable school teacher but by night I hung around bars drinking and
dancing and chasing women. I would meet some of the students in the bar
but next day we would play the teacher-and-student game. So I was tired
of living with the lies they tell.
It was a posh school by Jamaican standards with lots of up-tight,
unca-guid characters on the staff. There was no way that they would ever
let their hair down and have a hoolie. And there was nothing I could do
about it. I can't go kicking people who never sing my song. But the
contract would soon be up.
I wandered round the States on my way home and hung around with some
characters I had met in the Caribbean. Spent a couple of weeks in a
caravan in Montana with three lesbians, two lizards and a one-eyed husky.
While Diane had been away Mary had found Linda. They were trying to be
mature about the whole thing but in essence Diane was being dropped. Linda
was a country and western singer and I wrote this song so she could put
the words in Mary's mouth. I could empathise with the situation. The fact
that they were all female didn't make any difference, I had been there and
done it:
I had been in Africa for six months when this song appeared. Africa was
different. Not only the culture and the climate but also my lifestyle. The
wild days were over. I was in a boarding school way out in the bush where
sex, drugs and rock and roll were well out of sight and mind. It was
great. We were at the north end of the Kalahari desert where you could fry
eggs on the veranda during the day and needed a roaring fire to stay warm
at night. As well as teaching and supervising dormitories I was selling
eggs and chickens from our co-operative and teaching nutrition out in the
villages for a missionary organisation.
I still wrote to the gang from the old days but it amused me how different
I had become - and how quickly:
And then we were mortared. The school was destroyed and a lot of people
were killed. It was a mistake. It should never have happened. Yeh.
I was a refugee in a hotel with a homosexual Englishman and a Japanese sex
maniac. It took a long time for the authorities to decide what to do with
us. I had time on my hands during the day as did the local prostitutes. We
hung around together. They were great - they had no hangups about
anything. It meant that I got to know the townships.
My overall impression was not good. The old cultures were dying and the
new ones had not yet been built. There were few jobs and even less money.
People were in limbo - they didn't know what to do or believe - they got
drunk and violent - there was a lot of thieving. I began to think
seriously about 'development'.
This is another song about leaving a lady. This time it was an Oriental
lass I met when studying Development Theory. We were both temporarily
adrift - fish out of our accustomed waters - and we clicked - we were good
for each other. But we were young with lots of life ahead of us. When the
course ended we parted. There were regrets but there are:
A fifteen year dry spell before this song appeared. Another ten years
overseas, eight women and one development degree. The song arrived after I
had been home on retreat for a couple of years.
I was playing in a band which seemed to attract social workers. The shitty
relationships they had to deal with at work rubbed off on their
personalities. On top of that I was watching TV which oozed pathetic
angst. And nobody else I knew had a rosy view of life. I was a fish in a
vast ocean of glum. Nobody was making jokes about what was going on in
their heads - it was not part of the culture.
I taught myself managerial psychology and the theory of organisations.
This sorted out what I had been through with office wallies in various
parts of the world and my own head. I was gearing up for my next job as a
management adviser.
The more you know, the more you know that you don't know. It is only
simple minds that can slam tight shut. There are a lot of them about. They
cling tenaciously to their little certainties and cop wobblies at the
thought of having them removed. I found it best not to talk to people -
they didn't catch my drift.
I was back in Africa; this time teaching people how to be management
consultants - that at least was the day job. In the evenings I ran a
recording studio. Life was hectic but people were open and most had the
blues and were looking for a cure. I began to realise that I had found it.
It had been with me all the time like the sun behind the clouds.
Turn my head and look away
Refuse to earn the price to pay
To buy the things another day
Another day that never comes
Apart from the day job and the sound engineering I had a simple life with
simple meals. Left to my own devices the pace slowed right down so that
time stopped and I knew there was no highway.
This is a new song. I wrote it after a couple of double glazing salesmen
argued the toss about their windows in my living room. I liked the one
with the Caribbean wife best but he tried to rip me off anyway. Experts in
hospitality and decision management have mastered the art of hypocrisy,
and simple-minded, trusting souls are easy prey to their voracious
appetites. But the never ending highway is paved with deceit and Hell
means walking it forever. Better to get off.
The never ending highway