Mama’s dear friend from college days is a songwriter. A very good one.
She also is mama to that bad, baaaaad kitty, Lena, about whom I have spoken more than once on this blog. And Lena’s mama wrote a song some years ago that mama has been humming lately after she learned that it’s on a video advertising an upcoming movie called “Raising Hell” about Molly Ivins—newspaper columnist, outspoken politico and author, dead too young at 63. Bonny Rait sings mama’s friend’s song, Sweet and Shiny Eyes, at the end of the video and it feels like the perfect choice for Molly’s life. The songwriter, Nan O’Byrne, feels the same.
It seems that lots of artists have recorded the song, and even I am humming it along with mama because it touches a place in everyone, even kitties, where there was a loss that is unrecoverable and yet still poignant.
Gone but not forgotten, so to speak.
Well, I just wanted to mention this because mama is in her original habitat of Texas and was certainly on the same wavelength of Molly Ivins.
Mama’s high school teacher was really good friends with Ms. Ivins and mama longed to meet her one day, but mama’s teacher met his maker a bit sooner than expected and the moment was lost.
Still, the film is bound to be a loving tribute to an amazing woman, and that mama’s friend’s song figures in it really makes mama happy. In Texas, too, she’s thinking a lot about her long-time friend and good times past and future.
Here are the lyrics, so you can sing along, too:
Your sweet and shiny eyes
Are like the stars above laredo
Like meat and potatoes
To me
In my sweet dreams we are
In a bar
And it’s my birthday
Drinking salty marguaritas with fernando
Young and wild
We drove 900 miles of texas highway
To the mexican border
As the day was comin’ on
We crossed the rio grande river
And we swore we’d have things our way
When we happened to walk in to nuevo leon
Your sweet and shiny eyes
Are like the stars above laredo
Like meat and potatoes
To me
In my sweet dreams we are
In a bar
And it’s my birthday
And we’re having our picture taken
With Fernando
Funny how songs stick in your head and then you can’t get rid of them, but with this one, who wants to?
Me, I have trouble ditching “What’s New, Pussycat?”
Please, please go away, song!
