A realignment and a really good song
Plus, cake.
Hi!
I’ve been a little paralyzed lately when it comes to this newsletter. The last time I wrote you, I made an offhand comment about the slide into fascism. But of course, it’s not a joke. The reasons to be worried right now are real, abundant, and multiplying fast.
And yet, we still have to live: to figure out dinner, plan birthday parties, do our work, take care of our bodies and minds—and of one another.
I sometimes have to remind myself that even in our current context, these gestures and actions are meaningful. They don’t just make up our days; they give us something to care about and to advocate for. They also strengthen our communities, whether that’s our coworkers, neighbors, families, or friends. Near and far, these are the people we truly communicate with and support—and allow ourselves to be supported by. When the supposed leaders of the free world seem hellbent on making us feel isolated and afraid, it feels more important than ever to cultivate our ties to one another with tenderness, creativity, and—odd as it may seem—fun. To make some sparks in the dark.
When I started Have a Good Day (the Substack you’re reading right now) in 2022 and gave it the subtitle “Living well in weird times,” I think it was mostly the lingering shadow of Covid making things weird. (Who can remember?) It’s a different weird now, but the premise remains: that our days make up our lives and there are many ways, big and small, to make those days good.
For example, this tune has recently helped the vibe stay high in my car, kitchen, and head.
“Save It For Later”
The first time I heard this song I was watching The Bear and was sure it was some magical Peter Gabriel demo I’d somehow missed as a kid. It’s actually Eddie Vedder (!) covering a 1982 song by The Beat (aka The English Beat). I just love it. It’s a time collapser. I’m in the kitchen with Corey and our girls, but I’m also sitting shotgun in my older sister’s Jeep during those couple tween years that she had to drive me around.
That imagined flashback makes sense because the song was originally written by a British teenager grappling with growing up: Dave Wakeling, whose band The Beat recorded it years later.
I fell into a sweet A/V Club wormhole reading Wakeling’s oral history of the tune. Join me if you’re so inclined.
[The song is] about not knowing anything. [Laughs.] Or feeling like you know nothing, and grasping in the dark for your place in the world, and trying to do it with a wry humor. It’s like your legs give way, and every time you try to stand up and pretend to be a man, the boy in you would flip over in front of everybody and you’re embarrassed again, y’know?
“Save It For Later” requires some weird guitar tuning1 and later one of Wakeling’s heroes, Pete Townshend, called him up for help figuring it out. Townshend later covered it, including at a The Who reunion show he invited Wakeling to in Los Angeles.
Backstage beforehand, they met in person and hung for 30 minutes during which Townshend told Wakeling, “Dave, songwriters are the luckiest people in the world, it just doesn’t always seem like it.”
Then he played the show, and I didn’t really look at my ticket until I went into the auditorium, and it was seat A1, right at the very front, in the corner seat right on the aisle, right in front of Pete Townshend … And he started with a big speech about me. “I just want you to know that a guy I really admire and a great friend of mine is in the audience tonight, Dave Wakeling, written one of my favorite songs in my whole life and we’d like to start the set with it if you don’t mind.” And they played “Save It For Later,” and the crowd all stood up, and I stood up. And I swear I didn’t cry. I didn’t cry, but there were tears rolling down my face. There was no effort to it at all. They were just rolling, rolling. I was mesmerized really for the next hour or so. I couldn’t breathe properly.
I love all these versions of this song (Lua’s partial to Eddie Vedder’s) and that it was written by a kid trying to figure out how to be a person.
Have a good day!
Love,
Jenni
P.S.
Shana Tova to all who celebrate. I’m also told it’s “eclipse season,” so just a good time for fresh starts for everyone under the sun. I brought Ottolenghi’s apple and olive oil cake with maple cream cheese icing to our celebration. It was a step or two fussier than the recipes I usually go for, but the verdict was: Worth it. It also gave me occasion to use a genius horizontal cake saw my friend Yano brought me from France, and I think I finally learned to properly line a springform pan without fear. Onward!
It requires tuning one’s guitar strings to D-A-D-A-A-D as opposed to the standard E-A-D-G-B-E: a sequence I still remember from my teenage years thanks to my guitar teacher Zaf’s acronym: “Every Acid Dealer Gets Busted Eventually.”