Soundgarden – "Burden in My Hand" (1996)

Close your eyes 

And bow your head

I need a little sympathy

Frankly, I’d be happier if 2 or 3 lines was still a one-man operation.  As Napoleon famously said, “If you want something done, do it yourself!”  (Of course, he said it in French instead of English.)

But when you run a wildly successful little blog like I do, it’s impossible to do everything that needs to be done all by yourself – you simply have to delegate some of the work to others.

For example, I used to match up my freshly-laundered socks myself.  But I decided long ago that I could delegate that job to someone else.

Unfortunately, my original delegatee just paired my socks at random – she paid no attention to the color of the individual socks.  

As I’m sure you know, socks eventually fade after repeated trips through the washing machine and dryer.  If you match up an almost-new black sock with one that has been washed and dried a number of times, you’re going to end up wearing a pair consisting of one deep black sock and one that has faded to a dark gray.

You simply can’t match a sock from the top row in the photo below with one from the bottom row!

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Earlier this year, I let my original sock matcher go.  I haven’t found a replacement yet, so I’ve gone back to pairing up my socks myself.  But I continue believe that this is a task that can be delegated, and I’m looking around for the right person for the job.

Maybe that person is you – if you think it might be, please e-mail me at 2or3lines@gmail.com.  You’ll receive a prompt response – not from me personally, of course, but from the person to whom I’ve delegated the job of responding to e-mails.

One other thing.  Sock matching is not a full-time job, of course.  If you are hired as my sock matcher, you will be expected to perform other tasks – for example, keeping my pantry stocked with Dr. Pepper:

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“Burden in My Hand” – which was written by Soundgarden’s immensely gifted lead singer, Chris Cornell – was released in 1996 on Soundgarden’s fifth studio album, Down on the Upside.

The song appears to be about a man who murders a woman he is in a relationship with and leaves her in the desert.  Soundgarden’s lead guitarist, Kim Thayll, once said the song was “the ‘Hey Joe’ of the nineties.”

Cornell later had this to say about “Burden in My Hand”:

That was a song that really came from the guitar itself.  It was mostly like the guitar was dictating what the lyrics should be and creating a mental image.  The mental image was this sort of destitute guy. . . . He’s sort of coming to grips with what had happened and not necessarily feeling particularly emotional about it either way.  He’s trying to figure out how he would stand up and put one foot in front of the other – or not – and the song never really resolves any of that.  It’s just that moment of somebody sitting in the dirt. 

Cornell died in a Detroit hotel room in 2017.  The official cause of death was suicide by hanging.

The late Chris Cornell

Click here to listen to “Burden in My Hand.”  Why did I decide to feature such a dark record in a silly post about matching socks?  That’s a good question.

Click here to buy the record from Amazon.