Still Time
About six years ago I was touring for the first time in the Northeast. Although I love the long drives involved in playing around this beautiful country, I would rather eat live worms than try to find a place to park my van in the crowded cities of Boston, Philadelphia or New York. That means that I fly up there and navigate my way around via trains, buses and subways.
All of these modes of transportation keep to a schedule (for the most part), unlike driving my own car. I found myself constantly checking my watch against my ticket wondering if I had time to grab another cup of coffee, hit the bathroom or leave to smoke. For one particular leg of my trip, a dear friend met me to help me, afraid that I would be standing outside the venue in New York City at 2 a.m. with a wad of cash from the gig and my guitar like a target on my back. She was spot-on about me being a country mouse alone in the big city. Between luggage, equipment and merchandise, I didn’t have a free hand to hail a cab.
One morning, while waiting for our delayed train in Penn Station, my friend was telling me how she regretted not having shared with her mom that she was gay. She’d had a couple uncomfortable conversations with her mom about other friends’ relationships but never opened up about herself. She felt that by withholding this about herself, she never gave her mom the benefit of really knowing her as an adult or knowing her partner of several years, even if it would have been uncomfortable for a while.
Time is finite in the physical sense, but once we die, we aren’t subject to the constraints of the time we have on Earth. Time is boundless and irrelevant. I told her that whether she likes it or not, her mom has a grand and divine perspective on her children’s lives and knows everything about them now. You can’t keep secrets from angels; there was still time for her mom to know her.
I love words and playing with words. In that one conversation, I wondered which I would regret more, things I’ve said or things I haven’t said. I thought about how I wish that sometimes I could still time, stretch out the great moments. I wanted to make some of those minutes longer than sixty seconds. On other occasions, I had wasted so much time that I wondered if there was still time to do something more productive or pleasurable. I hardly ever feel that I have just enough time. I’m either rushing or waiting. While waiting for that train, I got out my guitar and wrote out a couple of verses. The chorus is just “Still Time.”
Still Time
Thirty years to speak up
Thirty years to speak your mind
Oh how the deadlines sneak up on you, baby
When you’re killing time
A million opportunities,
But, oh, you never took the chance.
Beaten by the clock, beating around the bush
Was never in your plans.
There’s still time
There’s still time
So you saved it up for years
You kept all to yourself
As if you had a pension plan
To accumulate emotional wealth
Now you want to spend all that you saved
But there’s no one left to tell.
But there’s still time
There’s still time
Screaming on the inside, on the outside it’s a pantomime
You could sum it up in one sentence, penance for a life of crime.
There’s still time
There’s still time
Still time, still time
by Susan Gibson
Susan, an established singer/songwriter musician, wrote the hit song "Wide Open Spaces." She released her latest album, "New Dog, Old Tricks" in 2008. Check out Susan's summer tour schedule at susangibson.comSowing a Seed and Sharing the Benefits: The Randall Master Gardeners
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