Wyn Drabble: Luke Combs on ageing resonates with the ageing

Wyn Drabble says there are plenty of famous quotes that help us through our relentless birthdays. Photo / NZME

Luke Combs’ latest album has a number of lyric lines which leap out from the music and into the consciousness of the ageing person.

That album – in particular those lines – is the inspiration for this week’s thoughts.

There’s nothing new in the content of these lyrics but they are good examples of what country music does best; it takes real life and sets it to three (or four, even five) chords. It reminds us of things we know already but there’s reassurance in knowing that others think as we do, knowing that we’re not strange.

An example from the album:

“And there’s a little more slow in his go,

“A little less rock in his roll, these days.”

Here Combs combines the assonance of slow and go and the contrast of more and less to remind us of a universal truth. It happens to us all.

And if I may head off on a tangent for a moment, it happens to us all even if we try to take the advice of Dylan Thomas in Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night. The power of his word choice (“Rage, rage”…) and the repetition of the imperative simply offer a more, shall we say, active alternative to slowing down (though I believe most of us shouldn’t try this at home without at least the aid of a walking frame).

But back to Combs. We all know that time has a habit of gathering speed. When we’re 5, a week lasts a year but, when we’re 75, a year lasts a week. “Where did that go?” you ask of the whizzing sound that just passed you. From another song on the album:

“Oh, time ain’t always your friend,

“It starts slow and gets faster t’wards the end.”

Again, nothing new but comforting to hear from someone else.

There are also plenty of famous quotes that we can wryly grin at, quotes which can help us through our arthritis, our short-term memory loss, our sagging skin and our dietary woes. The wits of the world can keep us smiling at our lot and I say that if you can’t laugh - especially at yourself - you’re probably halfway gone already.

You’ve got to laugh at George Burns, for example: “I’m very pleased to be here. Let’s face it, at my age I’m very pleased to be anywhere.” Or Bob Hope: “I don’t feel old. I don’t feel anything until noon. Then it’s time for my nap.”

If you want something a little more data-based or statistical, how about this from Larry Lorenzoni: “Birthdays are good for you. Statistics show that the people who have the most live the longest.” You can’t argue with that!

Or you can look at it another way. As John Glenn said, “There is still no cure for the common birthday.”

Keith Richards put it a different way again (though it’s possibly worth remembering that he fell out of a coconut tree on a Pacific island): “Getting old is a fascinating thing. The older you get, the older you want to get.”

I realise that this week I have borrowed very heavily from the words of others but that’s only because their words are better than mine. Also because I’m a cheapskate. But I’m not about to stop it now.

For this week’s closing words, it’s back to more lyrics about ageing and mortality awareness from the Combs album:

“In case I ain’t around when you get older I just thought I’d tell you now so down the road you

“Are good to go through the highs and lows In all life’s up and downs

“Yeah, that way I’m still there for you somehow in case I ain’t around.”