Like “They Moved the Moon”“You’re a Whole Different Person When You’re Scared,”“Fistful of Rain” represents Warren Zevon writing as a social critic or--as I like to think of him—as a prophet. Not that I would argue that he was chosen by God to deliver the Word, but rather that Warren seems to have had such a keen understanding of the human character and its failings (and possibly he specialized in the American character), that he was able to see what was coming long before it had fully manifested itself. Surely "Fistful of Rain" is a song about our long and frutiless struggle to hold onto, even freeze the past in a particular idealized moment. As James Gatz tragically discovered (let's see who picks up on that allusion), you can't recreate the past, which is colored by emotions and memories, and probably never happened exactly as we now think it did. The yearning for it, nevertheless, is terribly powerful, sometimes to the point of seemingly obliterating any rational thought. Certainly, that's one way to explain why we are here now . . . where we are. Because of what Warren saw happening then (and perhaps foresaw happening even more in the future), trying ever so hard to do something ever so impossible, like holding onto to a fistful of rain.
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