Wednesday, November 24, 2010

Cars Are People Too: An Essay On The Value of Sports Cars And Station Wagons In The Work Place


Cars are people too!

Years ago when my children were part of the boarder community (both skate and snow) I saw this logo on a t-shirt in a skateboard shop in Kamloops, British Columbia. Cars are people too never left my brain and I'll employ this car personification for an essay on guitar/banjitar busking.

In the world of work, there are sports cars and station wagons, and how people motor about at work very much determines their car personas.


Workers who use their place of employ as a bully pulpit, are sports cars. Sports cars love to expound their political personal preferences at every opportunity, be it in the lobby or the lunch room, even the lavatory. As a result of such chatty behaviors, sports cars often have loads of quality repartee.



Then there are those workers who behave in just the opposite manner; these people are station wagons, bastions who are rather fortified with regard to any personal disclosures whatsoever. Station wagons are very chary when expressing either personal or professional opinions. Station wagons will unload only the little luggage necessary to keep socially appropriate within the confines of their employ.


Sports car employees can be both beatific and narcissistic. They like to stay shiny and polished and look good. And oftentimes this sport car beauty can be more than skin deep, having the working abilities to scintillate and perform brilliantly; whereas station wagons oftentimes can be dowdy and frumpy.


Sports cars are always pert and flexuous and have the abs and curves to prove it. Sports cars consider work as a junket, a place where one can seek and find a disproportionate amount of pleasure holding court at every possible occasion. Station wagons, on the other hand, can be somewhat earthy and ordinary, even groundling-like in nature.


Sports cars can be capricious, multitasking on impulses and whims; whereas station wagons are the market martinets, staying rigid and pedantic.


Traveling most work worlds will reveal that there are exciting high roads of visibility and bland low roads of little renown. And always, there will be those middle roads of steady misadventure. If the work place is steady and the employees of that workplace solid, one will find that whatever road one takes to get the job done will, in fact, get the job done!


As for me and my world of busking, I consider myself a sedan. As a sedan, a busker must be bimotorous, able to change from sports car to station wagon behavior on a dime – performing with brilliance one moment, then having to roll up the mat and move up the street to another location on some authoritarian whim.


Buskers also have to be sedan-like banausic, realizing work for what it is – work! Buskers, for the most part, believe hitting the street is a practical way for make a living, just a utilitarian endeavor to support oneself in family, hobby, or habit.


Unlike regular workplace types, buskers are able to recognize the demarcations between sports cars and station wagons. In this regard, buskers must behave like sedans; they must be eclectic enough to adapt for the pitch at hand. Only sedans can pretend to be sports cars. The transformation from a sedan to a sports car may be just a pin stripe on a suit, or a coiffure from a salon instead of the barber shop.


To pursue a long and quality work life as a busker, one must definitely be a sedan. I suspect that most workers are, indeed, sedans, because sedans are malleable and sports cars and station wagons are not.



If Cars are people too -- people, too, are cars. And like most quality car lots, quality work places need a variety of models, including the sports cars and station wagons.



I wrote this song in memory of a green 1958 Chevrolet Del Ray my dad drove in the early sixties.


DEL RAY


[C Am F G (x3) then C vamp]


[CHORUS] [BASSO PROFUNDO]


I am [C]dreaming we are [Am]driving [F]away, [G]away

I am [C]dreaming we are [Am]driving [F]away, [G]away


I am [C]dreaming we are [Am]driving [F]away, [G]away

[C]In my [Am]’58 [F]Chevro[G]let Del [C]Ray



VERSE 1

[C]My tractor tire [Am]do in [F]Brylcream [G]blue


[C]My cool white [Am]shades, my [F]faded [G]jeans


[C]Black Cat [Am]smokes [F]tucked in my t-shirt [G]sleeve


[C]The top rolled [Am]down, just [F]feel the [G]breeze.


[CHORUS]


VERSE 2

C Am F G


We’ll drive to the beach buy some fries and some shakes


C Am F G


We’ll stretch out on the sand for that California bake


C Am F G


We’ll turn up the tunes on my car radio


C Am F G


We’ll twist under the moonbeams until it’s time to go


[CHORUS]


VERSE 3 [FALSETT0]

C Am F G


I am back to pumping gas … and dreaming every day


C Am F- G

I am dreaming we are driving away, away


C Am F- G


I am dreaming we are driving away away


C Am F G C


In my ’58 Chevrolet Del Ray


[X 2]



[C Am F G (x3) then C vamp]



1 comment: