Beautifully Born Losers

He wants to dream like a young man
With the wisdom of an old man.
He wants his home and security,
He wants to live like a sailor at sea.
Beautiful loser, where you gonna fall?
You realize you just can’t have it all.

Beautiful Loser lyrics by Bob Seger.

I don’t know about you but I think the lyrics to “Beautiful Loser” are lacking finality. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a nice song and I like it. But it’s just a bit off, real close to the way it should be but not completely there, you know? Crap, man, honest to God losers don’t just realize they can’t have it all! They know they don’t even keep a little piece of it, whatever it may be.

Well, it may be too much to ask for Bob to go too far in that one direction or to paint a full picture of historical losers in just one popular song.

As I look around, I see plenty of losers all over the world playing their own versions of the real ditty every day. And, to tell the truth, their versions are all a bit longer, far more richly detailed. The real-time, real-life versions are more like the endless chorus of Bye, Bye American Pie than anything else.

Maybe that’s why Bob left his lyrics hanging….the original works have already been done in a more brutal and less toe-tapping Top 10 way for many moons now.

But even with all the examples before us, it may be difficult for some to clearly describe losers and what it is that they are consistently losing.

Now, see, there’s the first problem defined in a nutshell. Our first inclination is to separate “us” and “we” from “they” and “them” when speaking of losers. Given the evidence, I think we probably should recombine those two words, artfully melding them together to describe to an impartial jury the exact form and substance of the perpetrators in this crime. The truth is, ladies and gentlemen, when it comes to losing, “we” are “they”. English words may be insufficient for this task. Surely there is a French word that successfully joins these concepts.

Ehhh…unnecessary as that may be, allow me to digress just a bit.

There is a false sense among all the turkey hunters out there that not everyone loses. I have met individual people who tend to believe that the form of life on this earth is characterized like a large bell curve. They insist that perhaps two percent or so of the population constantly achieve success and are not necessarily marred by perpetual error, failure and loss. They want to be assured that a presumably more haggard two percent struggle to survive in the bottom cesspool of the curve. In between, then, is where most of our day traders reside, regularly bartering fleeting victory for temporary meltdowns like fish mongers at a Japanese market, always searching for the best deal at the lowest price.

Jesus Christ, man! Everyone--not nearly everyone, but everyone--loses something in their lifetimes. That’s the painful fact, Jack.

I get to thinking that in our man-made world the tendency is to suggest that a big-time Loser, the one who that impressive term is truly saved for, is not considered beautiful but entirely, completely ugly. That person is off by his lonesome to the lower extreme, never getting a break and eternally unable to get his or her shit together. And that extreme condition is what we like tell ourselves affects only a chosen few.

Poor, poor Born Losers, so worthy of our pity!

We say that the pitiful life of a Born Loser is filled with endless excuses and pointless apologies, a life not accounted for in weak words or unclean convictions but displayed by incessant ineptitude, inaction at times and the most inappropriate behavior at other times.

But the real Born Loser shows us much more than that, man. The truth is the original Born Loser challenges us through daily action, a bold display of what we are and what we will become in a more vivid and more beautifully complete way than any other mildly amusing song and dance.

Yeah, the Bell Curve theory is bogus bullshit and I know it. It’s all about winning and losing, baby. What have you done for me lately, my dear? Hey, the Fall of the Rich and Famous is the most popular show every season. There they go up the ladder, the shooting stars, only to inevitably fall back to earth and face the human tragedy and dance in the muck of their own making.

Don’t go, we tell them. Stay here with us. But they can’t control themselves. They are so proud, so driven mad by their own ambitions.

Meanwhile, the Born Losers of the world gather together for numbing drink and a stunning bottom-feeder view of it all, smiling and laughing to themselves that the top two percent will never figure out the game. “They” will never understand that it all ends the same way, that we all pay equally for the transgressions of our kind.

Then, this is the incomprehensible part to me, here we have a situation where an entire world is cultivated and matured among the rubbish of human failure and unfortunate consequence. If mere happiness in life is the ultimate definition of success and death the final word on failure, then everyone and everything on this earth plays a losing hand. The cards are stacked against every living thing from the beginning of time and the house always wins in the end.

If it is true that only a fool plays a fool’s game, then what does that say about us?

There are students who suggest that we should relish our fame as perpetual Born Losers. They say that while losing may be inevitable, just playing the game is not guaranteed. They tell us even the earth and our universe itself is nothing but a big ball of pent up failure, a cosmic reminder of what once was had will soon be lost. They say “losing” is natural since, as we all know, one must have something before one can lose it. The key, they say, is to sense that something completely, hold it and cherish it for as long as possible, and recognize it as such a wonderful gift before it is gone and lost forever.

I dunno. Maybe someday I will write my own short song, a testimony to the power and strength of the beautifully Born Losers all over the world. I read that true Blues can not be identified with much of the mish-mash rock and soul we hear today. The real Blues is about rejected love and the constant clash of male and female interests. If it doesn’t say something about what could have been and what was lost then it isn’t The Blues.

In my shallow little mind, my song for losers will definitely be a bluesy tune, backfilled with a deep bass, a hard snare, and the rakish thumbing of a tired old guitar in the style of the great John Lee Hooker. My lyrics will be more direct but probably more incomplete than even Bob Seger could imagine.

Oh, I woke up this mornin’

Saw lotta pickers and choosers

What they don’t know is

They’s all Born Losers…

Yeah, yeah, no, no, hmm, hmm.

Cheers,
Mb