Recently I wrote a song titled “Some Change.” Literally, the song is about a guy whose gal has not come home: “Thirty minutes past midnight. Where could you be?”

Apparently, something like this has happened before: “On one of your road trips, from sea to shining sea?” When she still has not come back the next day, a mysterious third party makes the first of two appearances in the song: “Bubba said, ‘She’s gone and done it. She finally got out of this town. Just sayin’, she needed some change.’”

The first stanza, summarized above, is a made-up set of circumstances, reminiscent even of a situation in one of my favorite songs that no one else has ever heard of – “Hello, Rebecca” by Cast Iron Filter. In the refrain, though, are the words that inspired the song – “Try to guess what something is by naming everything it’s not.”

That’s not an exact quotation from anyone. However, I’ve heard Anne Lamott say something like, “Sometimes the only way to figure out what something is is by making a list of everything that it isn’t.”

Her context was relatively positive. As in, you’re experiencing something that’s unfamiliar. You have no name for this emotion. So, you start eliminating things that it is not. It’s not anger, it’s not fear, it’s not frustration, etc.

I like that concept. So much so that I wanted to work it into a song. My song, though, winds up presenting it in a different context:

“Same book. Another chapter. It’s an all too familiar plot.

Run around, playing fast and loose with everything that she’s got.

Try to guess what something is by naming everything it’s not.

Just sayin’, she needed some change.”

In the second (and final) stanza, the crisis is somewhat resolved:

“Someone told me they saw you at a mall in Tennessee.”

So, the missing partner is presumably OK.

And she’s with “a guy that looks a lot like me.”

Getting the message that he’s “ancient history,” the narrator says he’s

“… movin’ on, as they say, right on down the line.

“Sold your things at a yard sale. Also sold a lot of mine.

“Bubba thinks I’m going’ downhill, but I swear I’m doin’ fine.

“Just sayin’, I needed some change.”

In the second refrain, the narrator admits that it is he now who is

“… playing fast and loose with everything that I’ve got.

“Try to guess what something is by naming everything it’s not.

“Just sayin’, I got me some change.”

The song has a symmetry to it that brings the theme full circle. I wrote it thinking it was a sad country song. But it has a different feel every time I play it, and none yet has been sad or country.

Maybe it’s amorphous. Maybe it has no deeper meaning at all.

Hmm. I set out to write a column about change. I lapsed into the story about the song as a brief digression.

But now my space and word-count maximums are expended.

Next week I’m planning the second installment on Ben Franklin. Maybe more about change after that. See you then.

Vic Fleming is a district court judge in Little Rock, Ark., where he also teaches at the William H. Bowen School of Law. Contact him at [email protected].