This morning, driving up the 101 and admiring the purple and blue clouds and the steel gloss of the ocean, I was listening to Patty Griffin sing "Goodbye," from her Flaming Red album. I'm not patricularly a fan of Patty Griffin, but I like that song in the same way I like Lucinda Williams' "Side of the Road": I enjoy the terrible, painful melancholy it evokes, and I torture myself by meditating on this beautiful world and oh, how fleeting and all that crap. I am a sucker for heartache. Anyway, as I listened to the song, I became gradually aware that I would much rather hear Dave Alvin sing it. I could even imagine what it would sound like, inflection and all. He'd sing it an octave lower, of course--Patty Griffin frequently sounds like she's been sucking helium--and his production would be subtle, stripped down to nothing, and listening to it would make us all cry solitary tears. We'd think about our friend Jeff or whoever, to whom we failed to communicate the truth that he was beautiful and a talented mandolin player, and so he overdosed on heroin and damn, in a neat contradiction of our pain, if the sky isn't as blue and clear today as it was the day of his funeral. Yeah, it Hurts So Good! (But not in a John "Cougar" Mellencamp kind of way.)

Star of the day. . .Townes van Zandt