Dying With Your Boots On

Dying With Your Boots On

May 02, 2023

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No boots, no honor! The Dalton Gang sans boots after the Coffeyville, Kansas bank robbery, 1892.

Gordon Lightfoot passed away last night.  And I can't help but look at his passing through the eyes of a musician.  Like David Crosby, who passed away a few months earlier, Lightfoot died with his boots on.  That phrase originally came from a phrase “to drop in your traces” or “to die in harness.”  It was a reference to draft horses who would work up to the moment they died.  Even Shakespeare used the phrase in that Scottish play. At least we’ll die with harness on our back.  In the Old West, outlaws were not allowed to die with their boots or even photographed after death in their boots.  It symbolized that they were not worthy of honor.  So to die in your boots is a thing of honor.

The article in the AP news said that the 84 year old Lightfoot was planning a tour of the US and Canada.  Crosby was getting to work on more songs when he passed.  

Such passing ultimately is what artists seek, I believe.  Yes, there are other professions that perhaps a person can die doing.  And there are professions that at some point the person has to hang it up due to physical limitations.  But the arts carry a double edged sword for their adherents.  One chooses to die with their boots on because they love their craft, but also the craft demands that one financially toils until death because the arts pay so little.  Or should I say people pay so little to enjoy art? 

Obviously for Lightfoot and Crosby, it is the latter.  But for most artists, I suspect it really is the former that keeps them up at night.   

Not that it is a bad thing.  Keeping busy and keeping one’s mind and body alert is something everyone wants.  I am all for older people working and sharing their time, wisdom and creativity.  Especially as I get closer to being one of the old people. 

It’s the rare person who wants to retire to just do nothing. But for most working musicians, what is there to do but to keep on keeping on?

The big difference is that the artists who die with their boots on do so because that urge to create is always there. That is what for an artist those “boots” really are. Creating in the now.  And this is where it gets interesting for me. 

I don’t understand artists who play their greatest hits and that’s it.  There is something infinitely sad about PBS showing a band playing their hits from fifty years earlier without anything new. For me, the idea of creating has urgency along with the urge.  The gift of creation and touching souls has to happen and will happen as long as I am happening.  And hopefully an audience will allow their hero to perform not only old music, but the music they are creating now.   I loved seeing Steve Earle some years ago in Jackson Hole rock out through three of his biggest hits and then moving on to all new material for the rest of the concert.  It gave me a chance to concentrate on where he was now, at that time.   

The full arc of an artist’s life is that the artist is who they are in the now, drawing out the Universe one lyric, one brushstroke at a time.  It is an urgent need to remain a conduit and inspiration.  And it is no surprise that most artists will pass with another song or painting in them. 

I hope Lightfoot did indeed die with those boots on.  It’s the most any artist can ask for. 

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