One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice–
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
“Mend my life!”
each voice cried.
But you didn’t stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do–
determined to save
the only life you could save.~
This song has always given me a weird feeling.
I can’t exactly explain it – except to admit that the lyrics used to give me a strange tight discomfort in my chest, even though I’ve always found its melody hauntingly beautiful.
Was it a song about magic?
Or perhaps… a song about death?
When I was young, I did not know.
But I can’t help but recall that my older sister would often sing the lyrics – making sure to mimic the young Steve Winwood’s high pitched plaintive voice and making a mockery of the British way he pronounced can’t (like caunt) – and I would nervously laugh and laugh, and beg her to stop.
Oh, the nervous laughter we shared over that song!
Back then, I didn’t know what it was about…
or what made me so uncomfortable about that song.
And I definitely did not know what it was about this song that invited so much ridicule from my older sister…. and yet…
And yet…
Some thirty-odd years later, we got to talking about the song recently…and we admitted to one another that we’d always liked that song.
Funny that, eh?
Perhaps we are getting old.
~~~
Nowadays, I have begun to speculate what the song is about.
Or rather, I have become certain of what that song means to me.
It is a song about surrender.
Perhaps what had made me uncomfortable about the song was its tone – which now strikes me as a tone of surrender:
“Come down off your throne and leave your body alone. Somebody must change You are the reason I’ve been waiting so long – somebody holds the key Well, I’m near the end and I just ain’t got the time And I’m wasted and I can’t find my way home
Come down on your own and leave your body at home – somebody must change You are the reason I’ve been waiting all these years – somebody holds the key Well, I’m near the end and I just ain’t got the time And I’m wasted and I can’t find my way home…”
-lyrics written and sung by Steve Winwood/Blind Faith
As a matter of fact, while it is still true that it might be a song about fear of death or old age, that plaintive chorus of I can’t find my way home never fails to fill me with this unshakeable sense of loneliness and loss.
Perhaps the song is an extended and powerful metaphor of loss.
Or
Is it about someone who is spiritually seeking?
As it was with the mystic poet Rabindranath Tagore who wrote:
Where roads are made I lose my way.
In the wide water, in the blue sky there is no line of a track.
The pathway is hidden by the birds’ wings, by the star-fires, by the flowers of the wayfaring seasons.
And I ask my heart if its blood carries the wisdom of the unseen way….
We die containing a richness of lovers and tribes, tastes we have swallowed, bodies we have plunged into and swum up as if rivers of wisdom, characters we have climbed into as if trees, fears we have hidden in as if caves.
I wish for all this to be marked on my body when I am dead. I believe in such cartography–to be marked by nature, not just to label ourselves on a map like the names of rich men and women on buildings. We are communal histories, communal books. We are not owned or monogamous in our taste or experience. All I desired was to walk upon such an earth that had no maps.
~ Michael Ondaatje (The English Patient)
~~~
I stumbled upon this lovely quote on a friend’s blog today, and he spoke of being inspired by its metaphors.
I was so moved by it as well that I felt the need to share it.
Here is an absolutely beautiful poem that gives me *all the feelings* ❤
~~~~
” Listen, darling girl, to the words I give you now.
These boxes you try to build around Me will never contain Me – I am more than your mind can grasp. I will wear a thousand faces, come to you with a thousand names if need be, if it will make you see. We are not strangers, you and I – why then must you keep yourself from Me?
Listen to the words whispered in your heart, listen to the love burning through your veins, listen to the birdsong as the sun now rises and remember Me. I am here, as I have always been, but you will not see Me.
I have no temples in this world but those built in the hearts of My Lovers. The ground is warm beneath My feet, the wind dances through My fingers, and I have nowhere but your hearts.
bloodteethandflame 