Tugboat

I don't wanna stay at your party

I don't wanna talk with your friends

I don't wanna vote for your president

I just wanna be your tugboat captain

 

The song Tugboat is Dean Wareham's homage to Sterling Morrison, guitarist for the iconic band The Velvet Underground. Wareham, by his own admission, was heavily influenced by the band and by Morrison specifically, but the song is not a tribute to Morrison's career with the Underground. It is instead a reverent honorary to Morrison's second vocation, working on tugboats at the Port of Houston. That gig lasted from 1971 until his illness and ultimate demise in 1995.  Some no doubt ask, why should this be so celebrated in song? 

I will attempt to answer this, with the stipulation that only Dean Wareham can speak to the truth of it.

Sterling Morrison's life post Underground was quite simply just that and nothing more. It was his life and it was of his own choosing. 

Fans and music critics, Andy Warhol and the whole New York Art crowd, all the hangers on, grifters and tweakers all took that meteoric ride with The Velvet Underground from 1967 to 1971. Lou Reed and John Cale both went on to have legendary careers in their own right  Not widely known, yet widely known within a certain set. Musically the band would easily continue to hold a profound influence on rock music as an art form for decades to follow. All of this clout with little more than five years in total and a catalogue of only three or four albums. 

All of that is very impressive. If you are wired to that part of the world that is sometimes referred to as "polite society" or "civilization". Within that context these things actually matter. In truth none of it makes a bollocks bit of difference and Holmes Sterling Morrison understood this. On a late August day in 1971 he made his break from his past life. He left his band mates at a Houston airport, suitcases stuffed with phone directories as a prop. His original plan was to attend University of Texas. There is no indication from anyone that it was his plan at that moment in time to completely bail on polite society and spend the next quarter century riding tugs about the Port of Houston. But that is in fact what happened. 

Even though we are talking about a time period that is multiplied by a factor of four, we are generally led to accept the notion that those six years spent with The Velvet Underground are to outweigh the value of a life fourfold. When it is so spelled out one is confronted with the utter absurdity of this idea.  What is honored in the song Tugboat is Morrison's lifelong act of civil disobedience; a practiced mind over matter mentality. Cale and Reed are both deservedly weighted with accolades to their respective genius. Morrison figured out how to live a simple life with a roof over his head, food on the table and a good woman at his side. All that without the world knowing all of his business. Who was the real genius? Perhaps H.Sterling Morrison's true genius was that he wasn't overtaken by the need to constantly have his genius affirmed by others. Wareham's admiration is not misplaced.

Songs will very often take on a meaning to listeners that is far afield of the artist's original intent. Such are the risks inherent in any art. Each of us as individuals will experience different meanings in a song at different times in our lives. Speaking from my own personal experience I present a prime example. The Pretenders released My City was gone as a B-side to Back on the chain gang in the fall of 1982. Like Chrissie Hynde, I am also a Buckeye native. I was at that time returning to Ohio after having been working out of state for several years. The song was entirely relatable to me, in terms of where I was in life, where Ohio did/did not figure in that equation, and her observations were true. I could never have imagined at the time that the song would become immortalized as the opening theme music of a controversial radio program. There's thirty plus years of royalties paid, I should  think!

I find today that Tugboat is something that has become thematic to me. There is an elemental quality to the broader meaning of it. It can go unseen and yet intuitively it remains undeniable. Thus do I open the page with those words.

I don't wanna stay at your party

I don't want to belong to a party. I don't want to be part of any clubs or civic associations. I don't want to belong to a church. I don't want to live my life in debt. I don't want my every move measured by a scale that was made by others. I don't believe my blood is owed to pay for another's treasure. All of your institutions are meaningless, hollow shells of themselves. Your shining city on a hill is a decrepit wreck caught in a mudslide

I don't wanna talk with your friends

There is nothing left to talk about. Everything has been talked to death. All of your catalogue of isms has been presented. I reject them all. I'm alright Jack. You do you. I've heard every line of shit ever conceived and if you think your's is something new you are sorely mistaken. I don't want to hear about your solutions. I don't want to hear about your problems either. Most problems are created. By people trying to sell solutions. I don't want to be sold on anything. Save your breath. Whatever it is I'm not buying. I'll be polite only as long as I have to. That increment of time shrinks with each passing day.

I don't wanna vote for your president

Your campaigns mean nothing. I know it helps you to feel better to believe that. I also know that it is better that a man believe nothing than to believe that which is false. All of history is littered with tales of single men who come as saviors. They end up dead or as despots. I owe allegiance to no one simply by the accident of my birth. I bow to no lords or kings.

I just wanna be your tugboat captain

I don't need your validation. I determine what has worth to me. I associate with whomsoever I choose. I likewise do not associate with whomsoever I choose. In either case that is my business and my business alone. My business is my business and none who are not party to my business have any rights to interfere with my business. I can take care of myself . I am able to help care for others. I, and only I, will decide who those others might be. Form your own economy. Form your own currency. The only people telling you that you can't are the people who benefit from things as they are. I will navigate these troubled waters to a safer shore.