Even the Losers – Challenge #200

Tom Petty wrote ‘Even the Losers’ and it was recorded by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers on their breakthrough third album Damn the Torpedoes, which was released in 1979.  Love does not work out for everyone, and many people get rejected, but this song can help you feel better about yourself, if you do not win or succeed, and since love can happen when you least expect it, you just have to be ready when it falls in your lap.  This is what happened to Petty when he got lucky enough to spend the night with a high school crush of his named Cindy.  Petty refers to this song as being an anthem for underdogs, where people should stand up for their rights, so things can’t get taken away from them.  Songfacts® relates the lyrics in this song to the Thomas Hardy poem “Ah, Are You Digging on My Grave” that was published in 1914.  This poem was a bizarre conversation between a dead woman and her dog written with a grim sense of humor, becoming a satire of circumstance.  A great deal of disappointment is expressed, as the dead woman believes that someone who she loved is there at her grave to pay their respects.  Her dog realizes that he has disturbed her and he apologizes, telling her that he was burying a bone, and had forgotten where her grave was.  In life, people we once held dear, often forget us just as easily, and this song is in the same vein.

I guess that Tom probably felt like this on the morning after he was disappointed by Cindy, as she made sure he understood that this was a one-time thing.  In 1969, Petty and his friend Mike Nixon went to a friend’s party, and they took LSD.  In the middle of their acid trip, Petty saw his old crush Cindy who rejected him in middle school.  When Cindy saw Petty with long hair, something changed, and as the evening dwindled down, they found themselves smoking cigarettes on the roof and skipping rocks on a lake below an interstate overpass.  While they were alone, she let him know it was just for that night, however this close but no cigar encounter scarred his brain all over again.  He allowed himself to believe that he had a chance of getting lucky with her.  Tom said that he obsessed so much over this girl, that she’s probably in a lot of his songs.

This song didn’t come to him easily, but a few years later after struggling with the chorus, he had the chords and decided to cut this thing.  He had no idea what he was going to sing when he got to that point, and boom, divine intervention hit him, and it just came out, as he got lucky this time.  Tom was really happy, and he decided not to question where that came from.  Those moments of inspiration only happen when you put in the work ahead of time.  Tom feels that inspiration is out there, for those who can put themselves into a place where they can receive it.  Tom relates this to getting your antenna out there where you can acquire that signal, or else this signal will be lost in space.  Tom feels that results can’t be forced, as you have to let them come to you.

Well, it was nearly summer we sat on your roof
Yeah, we smoked cigarettes and we stared at the moon
And I showed you stars you never could see
Babe, it couldn’t have been that easy to forget about me

Baby, time meant nothing anything seemed real
Yeah, you could kiss like fire and you made me feel
Like every word you said was meant to be
It couldn’t have been that easy to forget about me

Baby, even the losers
Get lucky sometimes
Even the losers
Keep a little bit of pride
They get lucky sometimes

Two cars parked on the overpass
Rocks hit the water like broken glass
I should ‘a known right then it was too good to last
God, it’s such a drag when you live in the past

Baby, even the losers
Get lucky sometimes
Even the losers
Keep a little bit of pride
They get lucky sometimes

 

The challenge today is to focus on this song and use it for a short story, a piece of flash fiction, or a poem that you can share with the WordPress writing community.  There is no need to stick with this song, as you could write about another Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers song, or a Traveling Wilburys song, or another song that you think fits.  You could also write about the difference between being a winner and a loser.  If you ever experienced a kiss like fire then you could write about how that made you feel.  You could write about if you think that you will be remembered or forgotten after you are gone.  You could write about something which you knew was too good to last.  Did you ever experience divine intervention, and if you did that would make a great post?

The whole point of this MM Music challenge is to get you to think, to trigger something so that you can show how creative you are, and everyone is welcome to participate.  This challenge is very loose, so pretty much whatever you come up with will be acceptable.  I try to throw some ideas out there for you and if they seem right, then go with it.  You could write about being on a rooftop, or throwing rocks into water.  If you would like to write about running into an old flame, that would make a nice story.  You could write a post about being with somebody when they want romance and all you are looking for is to reminisce.  Mindlovemisery’s Menagerie brings you a dose of fetish, good friends and an incomparable muse and next Friday on January 28 Dylan Hughes will be here with her First Line Friday.  Sadly, this will be my last MM Music Challenge and hopefully Yves will find another host to take my place.  You can either create a ping back to this post, or place your link in the comments section below.