No. 032 - Willie Nelson's “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground” changed my life
Award-winning author DW Gibson found clarity in a shuffled CD mix in the early 2000s
This Song Changed My Life is an independent music publication featuring essays from people all around the world about the songs that mean the most to them. Created by Grace Lilly, supported by readers.
• 4 min read •
The first music I ever bought was Willie Nelson’s The Troublemaker, an $8.99 cassette.
This was 1986 and, to an 8-year-old like me, Willie Nelson already looked like he was 108; but somehow we were connected. Everything about him appealed to me. He was sanctioned in my family’s Christian home — he sang of uncloudy days and unbroken circles — but even at such a young age I could tell from the braids and the grin that he didn’t mind mischief either. He did, after all, also sing of getting busted in Laredo and bloody mary mornings.
He struck a magical balance for me: His lyrics told hard truths but his timbre always convinced me that everything was going to be okay.
Exhibit A:
Sixteen years after purchasing that first album, I stood alone in my Brooklyn apartment. It was one or two in the morning; I was several hours into some thinking, some drinking, some spinning out, collapsing in, praying, listening to random songs and chunks of albums. I was trying to decide if I should call X—— and declare that we should give it another shot. I had decided, for no particular reason, this was the night I needed to reach a conclusion.
The relationship openly disintegrated when, several months earlier, she left New York and took refuge in her childhood room back at her parent’s house. She needed time to think things through. Now, several months had passed and we were talking again. She had done her thinking and was ready to come back to New York.
So now the question was: What did I think about her moving back?
This was the early 2000s, CDs were still a thing, and I had a player that had very briefly been very fancy because it was capable of storing a library of something like 100 different disks. There was no curatorial effort on my part — it was a randomly ordered collection of albums acquired over time, and I had them all on shuffle.
Willie Nelson came on with “Angel Flying Too Close to the Ground.”
His voice hit my ear the moment after I had made up my mind to call X——, to say, yes, come back to New York, let’s do this thing again, let’s make it work this time.
But Willie changed my mind.
I had already spent my life loving — clinging — to many Willie Nelson songs. This one? I had never given it a second thought. This was the first time I listened to it. Something about that consequential moment in my life made me stop and hear it:
I knew someday that you would fly away…
Fly on, fly on past the speed of sound, I’d rather see you up than see you down…
I remember standing in the middle of my apartment, completely still. Staring at the phone in my hand, I knew I was not going to make the call. I knew the relationship was over in absolute terms.
I was coming around to the inevitability of her departure through my experience with this song just as she was asking me to consider a return. Willie put it in complimentary terms — the song is, after all, about an angel — but he saw the fraught road ahead and, in trademark fashion, he spoke directly: Let her fly. Time to cut things off.
Whether he intended to or not, Willie Nelson convinced me that making the call was just inertia. Not calling was something different. Not calling was the courage to walk away, to reimagine my life, and the song insisted I do so.
Everything was going to be okay. ◆
About DW
DW Gibson is the author of the award-winning book The Edge Becomes the Center: An Oral History of Gentrification in the 21st Century, as well as Not Working: People Talk About Losing A Job and Finding Their Way In Today’s Changing Economy, and 14 Miles: Building the Border Wall. He shared a National Magazine Award for his work on “This is the Story of One Block in Bed-Stuy, Brooklyn,” for New York Magazine. His work has also appeared in Harper’s, The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Guardian and several other publications. His next book, One Week to Change the World: An Oral History of the 1999 WTO Protest, will be published in June 2024.
Website dwgibson.net
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It’s an avant-garde film about a film, so it’s full of nonlinear memories, fantasies, apparitions, and dreams. It’s all over the place, but the music brings it all together. The score gives it a distinct exuberant personality. In fact, the score is often cited as one of the key factors that makes 8½ cohesive…
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