We can take it now that we made it this far in life’s pain and heartache school

Jackson Browne on Tour 2011

Call it the Seventies meets the Tens – there will be forty years of life to re-live on Monday in Moncton.

Iconic and deeply personal singer songwriter Jackson Browne is touring Atlantic Canada April 11, 12, 14

Jackson Browne was once described as so personal you had to listen on headphones.

I was married for 5 years when I heard Late for the Sky in 1974. He was speaking to me, telling me it was over.

The marriage, the religion, the first 25 years of my life – it took another 8 years to sort out the mess. 

I left the Jehovah’s Witness religion, that weird collection of “end of the world” doomsday right-wing protestants that bang on your door. Thanks for the bible education and sales skills – no thanks for the mental anguish and excommunication techniques.

The religion and the marriage were inextricably connected. Family breakup with all the spiteful destruction of children’s lives that comes with the territory. It happens all the time. You learn that. The pain, the heartache and the loneliness.

But that feeling of being alone was gone. Someone else had articulated the same feeling of being alone while living with a lover.  I was sharing that pain with someone else.

Looking hard into your eyes
There was nobody I’d ever known
Such an empty surprise to feel so alone

Now for me some words come easy
But I know that they don’t mean that much
Compared with the things that are said when lovers touch
You never knew what I loved in you
I don’t know what you loved in me
Maybe the picture of somebody you were hoping I might be

Awake again I can’t pretend and I know I’m alone
And close to the end of the feeling we’ve known

The Moncton date is easiest for Islanders to make, along with performances in Halifax and St. John’s.

Close your eyes and feel the loneliness. You made it.

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Words and music copyright Jackson Browne or someone who owns his copyright