Been playing so much piano this year and transposing many old songs from guitar to piano. I once read Bob Dylan recorded both Highway 61 Revisited and Bringing it Back Home in two versions, one on guitar and the other piano, deciding later what he liked best. Whether true or not I like that idea. Been changing White Dress and Airplane on the Highway into piano songs and swinging their structure like a Nilsson song. Is that why I also started playing One? And later went down a rabbit hole of versions between Three Dog Night, Aimee Mann and the big gouda himself. The Aimee Mann version doesn’t do it for me though I loved Magnolia at the time and within the film it was perfect. You win again Jon Brion. I especially liked Tom Cruise as repressed angry moron unwilling to recognize his own self deceptions. I wonder how he came up with experiential character material? My voice has changed over time, lowering White dress a minor third. When Sam’s voice changed I thought he was intentionally trying to sound like Johnny Cash’s last incarnations. Until we were hanging together each week, I didn’t understand why his singing changed. It just was the way his voice naturally aged. There was a lyric in one of those last songs, “I can’t find anything, where is that wedding ring? Where’s that drink I made? How can a drink go away? Where is her smile of spring? I can’t find anything.” I couldn’t understand what he meant by how can a drink go away. When I asked him he replied carefully, explaining in the not too distant past people spoke of a drink as an alcoholic beverage. It is a favourite memory maybe because I don’t drink or knew the normalcy of drinking. I thought he meant where is my apple juice and I found it too cryptic. Sam often said generous flattering things to me. Positioning me musically like a superhero. He probably got extra pleasure in moments like that, realizing how little I knew about things he knew all about and being reminded that I was also a poor slob and him a superhero. That’s the thing about trying the song in different ways, there is no one way.