Elise commentary: 'Hey,' Loneliness and 'The Ballad of Larry'

With gratitude and kudos to the wonderful actor and musician, Ronny Cox, I write the chorus of a beautiful song written by Ronny’s good friend. The song is called, “The Ballad of Larry,” and the chorus goes like this:

Think you’ve got nothing to give?

Look around how people live

Loneliness is poverty

Say hey, say hey to me

This song speaks to us on many levels. It is too tempting to feel like a failure when things go wrong in our lives. With that feeling of emptiness, we can also become selfish and disregard the needs of others.

The narrator of the song reminds us to examine other people’s lives and not be stuck in thoughts of our own misfortunes.

In this thought-provoking song, Larry is a veteran and is down on his luck. He drives a blue rundown Econoline and buys a 6-pack of malt liquor, “the Prozac of the poor.”

I never thought of loneliness as poverty until I listened closely to “The Ballad of Larry.” But it truly is. We are destitute of spirit when we are lonely. Unlike being too poor for food and shelter (unspeakable deprivation), the poverty of loneliness is one we can actually grab onto and mend.

The narrator tells us about a broken piano he owns. It has missing keys, is out-of-tune, and does not belong. He decides to put an ad In the paper letting people know they can take a piano for free if they want to haul it away themselves.

Many folks come to see the piano, play chop sticks and other well-known melodies on it. However, nobody plays without hitting the broken keys.

But then Larry shows up, shaking from cold and malnutrition, and asks to see the piano. Without answering whether he wants a cup of coffee or anything to warm him up, he goes straight to the piano.

Larry’s face “twisted in joy” when he drew his name in the dust and recognized exactly when and where the piano was made. He commented that he had not seen such a piano since he was a young lad.

When the narrator asked him to play something, Larry banged the barrel house blues and played other songs with conviction and happiness. They were songs of love of country, from sea to shining sea, and Larry was immersed in the beauty of it all.

Even though he played many songs, not once did the narrator hear a broken key. He writes: “A broken old piano and a broken old man rode away smokin’ in a broken old van.”

We’ve talked before about those I-Thou moments where, with very little effort, our spirit and soul can touch another person’s spirit by a simple smile, a nod of the head or a word of greeting. Our humanity is shared in that moment and we are made better by it.

We imply by these actions that “I see you” and “you matter.” In turn, we can quell both our own loneliness and that of the fellow traveler with whom we interact. Lent is the perfect season to remember this vital aspect of living. We still have time before Easter Sunday to focus on this goal.

As Socrates noted, “the unexamined life is not worth living.” If we don’t stop and find those moments when we can do better, what is the point?

So easy, so effortless, so undemanding: just “hey.”

This article originally appeared on Amarillo Globe-News: Elise commentary: 'Hey,' Loneliness