A Walk with Aqualung – Cheap Day Return

Greetings Dear Reader,

For those who do not already know it, a “Cheap Day Return” is a reduced price return train ticket in which the round trip is made on the same day.  Ian Anderson has indicated that he wrote this and Nursie concerning a visit to his ailing father.    I have included both below.

I cannot imagine how little fame matters when a beloved family member is ill or dying.  Cheap Day Return is one of the bands shortest songs.  The sweet guitar in it transforms one to the sadness of the man standing on the platform.  He is dancing on the outside but wondering if his father gets the care he should.

I remember how this short tune reached deep inside me to the place where I was hiding all I was feeling.  Sadness hung in my heart constantly ripping away any good feeling that tried to penetrate it. 

I remember feeling like a misfit and outcast everywhere.  My encounter with Christ that would change me was still three years down the path.  I remember making the conscious choice not to care about anyone or anything.  This song touched the sadness and set the stage for other more malevolent feelings that would arise in me.

At age eleven I was already trying things that were dangerous and unhealthy.  I would listen to this song over and over.  I was trying to play the guitar and had an ear good enough to fake this song.  Only later did I realize the complexity of the music and depth to which that complexity carried the listener to the pit of sadness hanging in the singer.

There was no Nursie to cool my fever at this time.  No one was left to brush away the pain and darkness was warming up a sirens call that tethered to the depth of my being.  The trips back and forth between surviving my daily life and turning inward became less taxing and more costly almost daily.  My pain and gathering darkness offered unending cheap day return.

Cheap Day Return – Ian Anderson

Preston Platform

On Preston platform

Do your soft shoe shuffle dance.

Brush away the cigarette ash that's

Falling down your pants.

And you sadly wonder

Does the nurse treat your old man

The way she should.

She made you tea,

Asked for your autograph --

What a laugh.

Nursie – Ian Anderson

Tip-toes in silence `round my bed

And quiets the raindrops overhead.

With her everlasting smile

She stills my fever for a while.

Oh, Nursie dear,

I'm glad you're here

To brush away my pain.

Wishing you joy in the journey,

Aramis Thorn

Mat 13:52 So Jesus said to them, "That is why every writer who has become a disciple of Christ’s rule of the universe is like a home owner. He liberally hands out new and old things from his great treasure store."