Autobiographical Songs
Carissa
Autobiographical
songs, Ohio
Left Ohio.
Carissa was his second cousin, killed in a freak accident. Burned to death.
Just like their grandfather. What are the chances? he asks in this highly
autobiographical song full of melancholy and wondering, loss and unending
questions. The landscape of rust-belt Ohio, devastated by prescription drugs,
black-tar heroin, unemployment when the manufacturing jobs left, when the mines
closed.
I might have
been drawn to this song because it deals with memoir, or because of the Ohio
connection (I hail from there) or because of the voice. Nothing spectacular,
the whole song is somewhat flat and not exactly full of emotion, but it evokes.
It tells a story that demands our attention, because we all know someone like
Carissa, someone deserving of a little poetry in their life, who vanish way too
suddenly from this earth. He also brings us back to family, all those needling
connections that we sometimes want to forget about, and our place of birth
which we leave only to return to for funerals. Such as Carissa’s.
I left Ohio in
1982 without any real idea of what I was doing. I went off to Chicago to do
volunteer work in the inner city. It was a rough time, emotionally demanding.
There were times I must have appreciated the fact that I was not planning to
stay. Yet I did. Here I am 35 years later.
I still have
family back home, though my parents have passed. I no longer have ties to
Dayton or Centerville where I grew up, but several friends still reside near
there or else in Athens where I attended university. I go back every couple of
years to connect with good friends, to walk the hills or by the Hocking River.
We hit garage sales and the thrift stores. We sit around and talk about old
times, friends who are no longer with us, or whom we have lost contact with.
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