Dirty Work by Steely Dan

I begin a new blog today. It's about music. Being a man of faith in Christ, I cannot help but reflect upon all things through my faith. I don't compartmentalize. Jesus is a part of everything I am, especially music and movies which are my two favorite pastimes. The thought behind this new blog is to share my love of music and my faith perspectives aroused by the lyrical and melodic content of a particular song. You are invited to come along.

Because I listen to so much music, my brain acts like a jukebox. It flips a single on for me once in a while. Some mornings I will wake up with a song on my mind. I don't know why. It often doesn't make sense. It's random. Or is it? It likely is just random memory being processed by my brain and sometimes I get to listen in on my subconscious as I awaken. But it's only unimportant if I choose to pay it no mind. I am choosing to pay it mind today.

I don't know why, but Steely Dan's Dirty Work was on my mind this morning as I woke. I like Steely Dan. I wouldn't say I love Steely Dan. I listen to them in spurts. I own most of their music on vinyl. I only have their greatest hits on my iPod. Being a Spotify customer, I can listen to Steely Dan anytime or anywhere as long as I have a cell phone signal. In West Lafayette, near the Purdue University campus, there was a record shop known as Von's. That's where I bought like six Steel Dan albums one day. They were in the cut outs for $3.99 each. Vinyl LPs in those days ran between $8-12.

I used to work as a sales representative for an industrial gas firm. I sold carbon dioxide. Don't freak out. It's a naturally occurring gas that plants depend on for life. It's called dry ice in its solid form. I sold carbon dioxide to a pizza toppings manufacturer in Lafayette, Indiana in the mid to late 1980's. So browsing at Von's became a lunch time hobby whenever I was in town.

Younger folks might enjoy browsing the internet, but they just don't know the joy of browsing music LPs and tapes and CDs in a favorite record shop. Each shop has its own vibe, literally. There's the lighting, the smells and the visual experience of colorful posters all around. Unless you were in some corporate store, each shop was an extension of the owner.

One of my favorite quotes is from the film Almost Famous, written and directed by Cameron Crowe. The character Penny Lane, played by Kate Hudson, says,

"I always tell the girls, never take it seriously. If ya never take it seriously, you never get hurt. If ya never get hurt, you always have fun. And if ya ever get lonely, just go to the record store and visit your friends."

She meant, the musicians on the vinyl. The musicians are your friends because they make music that helps you to find your heart. Their music moves your body. Their words give expression to your experience. Their lyrics educate and elevate. Their passion stirs your heart and opens you up to bigger ideas. No wonder I think of God when I listen to music.

Steely Dan is the creation of Walter Becker and Donald Fagen. They met in college in the late 1960's and began writing music together. They were hired by ABC Studios as songwriters and eventually were encouraged to create a band using session musicians. Steely Dan was always on the radio in the 1970's. They were quite popular, although they only toured 1972-74. They broke up in 1981.

Donald Fagen suffered from stage fright and was insecure about his singing voice.  That is why Dirty Work, sounds so different from most of Steely Dan's more memorable songs. Donald Fagen doesn't sing it. It's sung by David Palmer, hired to sing lead vocals on stage for the band. By the second album, Fagen took on the role of lead vocalist. Palmer left the band quietly.

So it's even weirder that I have Drity Work on my mind this morning. I didn't even remember who did the song. I thought perhaps David Gates and his band, Bread, had released the song, although I doubted my failing memory. After a Google search I discovered Steely Dan released the song on their first album, Can't Buy A Thrill, in 1972.

DIRTY WORK (1972)
Songwriters: BECKER, WALTER CARL / FAGEN, DONALD JAY
Dirty Work lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group, Warner/Chappell Music, Inc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eSj62O3snJo 

Times are hard
You're afraid to pay the fee
So you find yourself somebody
Who can do the job for free
When you need a bit of lovin'
Cause your man is out of town
That's the time you get me runnin'
And you know I'll be around

CHORUS:
I'm a fool to do your dirty work
Oh yeah
I don't wanna do your dirty work
No more
I'm a fool to do your dirty work
Oh yeah

Light the candle
Put the lock upon the door
You have sent the maid home early
Like a thousand times before
Like the castle in it's corner
In a medieval game
I foresee terrible trouble
And I stay here just the same

CHORUS

This song is about an adulterous affair. When her husband, or regular sexual partner, is out of town, the subject female in the song solicits this other man, the singer, for illicit love. The man feels guilty, but he just can't seem to say "no." He foresees terrible trouble as a result of their affair. Yet because their sexual affair is so powerfully addicting, he will stay in it regardless of the consequences.

Adultery made the top ten list in the bible's list of holy commands. The so called Ten Commandments act as sort of a summary or an overture to the Law of Moses. The first four commandments are about Israel's relationship with God. A pivotal fifth commandment is about one's relationship to one's parents. The last five commandments are about our relationship with others. 

These words were given to Israel, God's chosen nation, who are called to reveal God's character and will to the world. The means by which Israel and God accomplish this mission of revelation is by establishing a holy nation of people who keep God's holy covenant with its laws, commands, and instructions. Through keeping the covenant God blesses Israel with protection, peace and prosperity. When other nations look at Israel, they are intended to see God's blessings and learn the wisdom of Israel's way of life under the law of Moses. That's the general idea. Other nations would be attracted to Israel's way of life and convert to faith in the living God.

Adultery is what happens when one person steals the wife or husband of another. To have sex with the spouse of another person is a form of theft. She or he doesn't belong to you. The wife has given herself to her husband alone through sacred vows. She willingly entered into a marriage where she pledged to belong to her husband and no other. Her husband made the same promise to her. When these vows, these sacred promises are broken, all kinds of trouble follows.

Nicky Gumbel, the leader of the Introduction to Christianity ministry known as ALPHA, says that sex is like gluing two pieces of corrugated cardboard together. Try pulling them apart and pieces of each stick to the other. It's impossible to cleanly separate them. Pieces and parts of those we have sex with sticks in our minds and souls.

The apostle Paul wrote,

Do you not know that your bodies are members of Christ himself? Shall I then take the members of Christ and unite them with a prostitute? Never!

Do you not know that he who unites himself with a prostitute is one with her in body? For it is said, “The two will become one flesh.” But whoever is united with the Lord is one with him in spirit.

Flee from sexual immorality. All other sins a person commits are outside the body, but whoever sins sexually, sins against their own body.

Do you not know that your bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit, who is in you, whom you have received from God? You are not your own;20 you were bought at a price. Therefore honor God with your bodies. (1Co 6:15-20)

You can see Paul clearly understood the loaded gun called adultery. There's nothing casual about sex. It's such a whole mind, soul and body experience. Sex burns neurological pathways into our brains and nervous systems. Like any addiction, sex for sex's sake, becomes a trap. Eventually the thrill is gone and it takes imaginative efforts to reach newer levels of ecstasy. Changing partners does it for a while, but soon enough the same plateau hits and one finds themselves numb and looking for more.

Paul names that trap in his letter to the Ephesians. 

Having lost all sensitivity, they have given themselves over to sensuality so as to indulge in every kind of impurity, with a continual lust for more. (Eph 4:19, NIV84)

What if find most intriguing about the lyrics to Dirty Work is the very first line.

Times are hard
You're afraid to pay the fee
So you find yourself somebody
Who can do the job for free

What fee? If I am reading the sing correctly, the hard times are when her man is out of town. Musicians know this all too well. They are out on the road. They are lonely for their loved ones at home, so they turn to sex, drugs, and booze to deal offset the feelings of loneliness. Their loved ones at home suffer, too. In their loneliness they also look for means to counter the pain. Looking for love in all the wrong places is part of what a spiritually unbalanced person does.

In response to her pain of loneliness, boredom, and other insecurities, she reaches out to her backdoor man. He is her fix to her emotional, physical and spiritual need. Apparently she does the same for her adulterous lover, because he keeps coming when she calls, even though he knows it's only baiting trouble.

What she is doing is exchanging sex for God. The price she is afraid to pay when her man is out of town is learning to be alone. Learn to be alone with God. We are meant to live in relationship with God. Faith in Christ makes this possible.

We all make mistakes. We all break rules. We all exchange the glory of God for some short lived thrill in this world. The very nature of idolatry is to exchange God for a created thing. We are masters of idolatry. We just don't realize that is what we are doing when we run to the mall for some retail therapy, or pull a movie marathon, or dive into the arms of a welcoming lover.

Yes, the singer knows that what he is doing is dirty work. He is her drug to take away the pain. He is her easy answer to a spiritual problem. She doesn't know how to be alone. He isn't helping her. He is keeping her trapped in an dependency upon sexual experiences as a means to divert her attention away from her spiritual emptiness.

Yo were meant to live in relationship with God. God loves you and is calling you to be His lover. What is sex anyway but an expression of our need for intimacy. We desire to be loved and be in love. We cheapen the gift of sexuality when we make it about the experience. It's about our need for intimacy. There is no greater intimacy than to know the love of God. There is no greater ecstasy than to be united with God. All things in the world pales. God is eternal.

Consider your heart. What price are you afraid to pay in order to learn to be alone with yourself. The truth is you are not alone. God is there in you waiting for you to love Him and let Him love you. When you can learn to be content in God's presence, all your relationships with others will improve. The love of god compels us to live generously toward others. We naturally want to share the joy. We want to love others because the love of God is bursting within us to come out.

Learn to turn to God in times of loneliness, insecurity and neediness. Stop running after short term substitutes for what you truly need. And don't expect others to fix you, or be your fix. That's dirty work fro you alone. That's hard work that only God can help you with.

Dearest Lord, thank you for helping us to discover the true nature of love and our deepest need for you. Open our hearts and teach us to wait upon you. Let us expereince divine love and meet our need to be joined with you. Amen