Walt Grace

heard a new song today, "Walt Grace's Submarine Test, January 1967." brought tears.

every man, beneath juvenile tendencies to make the scene, has an instinctual drive to provide. while individual passions may not coincide with this primal fire, they may very well compliment.

"Walt Grace, desperately hating this whole place
Dreamed to discover a new space and buried himself alive"


it initially struck me that Mr. Grace was fed up with, not only the world that surrounded he and his later-learned-of family, but the entirety of his living situation. i was, by your incredible perceptivity to context clues, incorrect. 


hating the world he and his family lived in, Walt decided to make a change. while it was thankfully only a hypothetical burying of one's self, Walt's dedication to detaching himself from the environment he loathed matched, or fell lesser to, his actual move toward personal satisfaction.


"Inside his basement, Tongue on the side of his face meant
He's working away on displacement, And what it would take to survive. 
Cause when you're done with this world
You know the next is up to you"

he didn't wait for, expect, or want anyone else to achieve his dream for him. a specific passion fueled and refueled him. Walt's calculations to maintain his current state of living not only meant the finality of his own mortality, but the futures of his wife and children.


 John Mayer hasn't introduced us to a genius or an exception here, Walt is as simple as you and me... as down-to-earth as you and me... as fed up as you and me.


"And his wife told his kids he was crazy
And his friends said he'd fail if he tried"


Walt eventually figured out what he was born to do. all the while living life, making plans and acting on those plans, starting and providing for a family... life very quickly becomes a comfortably difficult rut to break out of. his wife did not wish to see him suffer, stomp his dreams, or live an unfulfilled existence, she simply bought wholeheartedly into the life that they had together since created. 


if we are lucky, we have one person whom we consider a friend, that can be counted on for an unequivocally honest answer or opinion and steadfastly bolster that notion, whether it is in your defense or your scrutiny; on the contrary, others we consider friends advise based on spite, jealousy, or downright malice. thus, opinions of "friends" are only to be upheld with extreme prejudice.


'But with the will to work hard and a library card
He took a homemade, fan blade, one-man submarine ride"


a man no more educated than you or i acted on and, if you'll explore the rest of the song, achieved his ultimate goal. 


what is your "homemade, fan blade, one-man submarine ride?" if it is specifically that, then you've now got a blueprint... but if, like myself, something else drives you and is a goal that those around you might say is nonsensical or unattainable, tear a page, as i have, out of Walt Grace's book... 'cause when you're done with this world you know the next is up to you.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUKbqtjIoOs