On Common Folks
An Ode To The Ordinary and Everyday
11 Time Grammy Nominee Eric Church once called me “Amigo”.
I imagine he probably calls all his closest friends that. He said “Thanks Amigo” as I handed him a pound of ground beef wrapped in brown butcher paper from across a greasy meat counter, the place where I once spent countless hours serving plastic soccer moms and Lacoste sweater CEOs.
Eric was cool, though. (Notice the first name basis). I told him I owned his albums on vinyl. “That’s the best way to listen”, he said.
All jokes aside, that encounter is about the extent of my stardom, besides of course meeting prolific songwriter Stephen Wilson Jr. at TJ MAXX, where we both just happened to be looking for black wife-beaters (or “undershirts”, if you’d rather). Neither of us found them. I expressed my gratitude towards his art, he said thanks and told me he would be coming back to Nashville later that year, and we parted ways. I also had a dream that I met Jim Croce in a parking lot one time, but that probably doesn’t count.
These little run-ins are mere occasions: The exceptions to the rule. You bump into a celebrity, someone that wrote a cool song or appeared on TV a few times, you act a little awkward, maybe even get a quick picture for your instagram (which will accumulate a total of 4 likes, half of which are your own family). You go home, they go home, and your new celebrity friend forgets you exist by lunchtime tomorrow.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s exciting to meet famous people… But it’s not “real.” The effects of fame, both on the celebrity and those they encounter in the public world, are mere illusions.
What is real is common folks. Everyday I wake up, I go out into the world, and I meet a whole bunch of regular old average Joes; some of them actually named Joe, and others named things like Robert or Diane or Andy. These are the people who start their car to let it heat up before driving to a job that requires them to punch a little timecard upon arrival. People who try to spread cold butter across toast and butcher the whole thing and eat in on a paper plate. The kind of folks who sit at the DMV and read newspapers and pack turkey sandwich lunches and shop for curtains at Walmart.
No masks, no makeup… Folks like me and you.
Out of this swelling snowflake storm of unique individuals, all different and strange and “normal” in their own ways, I meet a few, we share a small interval of our lives together, maybe even just a few seconds, and then we press on. Maybe I’ll see them again, maybe I won’t.
Maybe I’ll learn something about them. The girl that made my oat milk Cortado is a self pronounced bi-sexual and she’s going up to Michigan for Christmas. The guy who listed the home I showed to my clients has two young children; I can hear them playing and screaming on the phone. The cheery restaurant manager that took my order is quietly grieving the sudden death of her mother, and the guy down the pew from me took a stab at suicide once.
I didn’t ask any of them for a selfie, nor did they ask me. I wasn’t able to see the childhood trauma endured by our waitress at Olive Garden as she refilled my glass of tea. The old man behind the counter at Ace Hardware has no idea that I’m named after my great grandfather. I have no clue what kind of life the deaf New Yorker I met in a Starbucks has led; he has no idea that I wrote a song about him.
But here we all are, special in our own individual ways, unreplacable, and also delightfully regular. Not one of us is too plain, nor superior or inferior. We may write symphonies and fight wars just the same as we may lose our keys or change a diaper. We are human beings, and we all have a set number of days set out ahead of us, each choosing to live those days out according to whatever it is we follow. We all lay our head down somewhere at the end of the day, and we all rise to the same golden sun.
All in all, those lives we think are so high above ours are not so in the slightest. That’s not to say we are all equal in our moral choices or fruits of action and discipline, but we are not plain men living among gods. We are men and women among other men and women; all level in worth, all created equal, and all equally in need.
I’ve never written a radio hit song (not yet, anyways…), but I’ve met a need of someone who has. I’ve never held a position of power or high regard, but I sleep and eat and brush my teeth the same way they do. Whether you’re John Wayne, John the Apostle, or just John from accounting, you’re made of flesh and bone, you’re made in the image of your Maker, and you’ve only got so much time here. I think it wouldn’t hurt to step away from our man-made hierarchies and simply see mankind as mankind: All breathing, all dying, and all in need of some redemptive purpose.
Common folks are special, and the truth is we are all common folks at the core. We make terrible celebrities, and even more terrible gods. But we make up the human race, Imago Dei, and that’s one hell of an honor in my eyes. Why try to be anything else, you know?
To quote the great poet (John Prine, of course):
“You are what you are, and you ain’t what you ain’t.” (‘Dear Abby’)
Regardless of status or bank account, we all share the same situation of humanity with all it’s joys and quirks and treacherous embarrassments. We all are capable of doing amazing things, just as we’re all capable of doing very plain things… and very bad things. It’s all beautiful and horrible and unflinchingly peculiar. Above all, it’s real, and to say that one has ever (or could ever) supersede this realness because of their fame or fortune is downright ignorance. If you’re human, that means you’re down here in the common mud with the rest of us, Country Music Stars included, and what joy it is to find how much beauty and life there really is in those things we regard as “common”.
The common life belongs to each of us, and I’d say it’s a life worth living, Amigo.
— Ian Samuel Helton
I love writing. I also love coffee (in case you haven’t noticed). I may not pay the bills with my writing at the moment (it’s free!), but if I can turn a poem or essay into a few ounces of drip, that would be neat. I appreciate your support and, as always, thank you for reading!
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Well said! This way of thinking would bring about a change in the world that no one has ever seen. Imagine a world where we appreciate the fact we are human AND in need of redemption.