Songs to Awaken You

[Dekalb_Blues]

TWO BY PAUL SIMON
from his 1990 album Rhythm of the Saints

>>Firstly, a song about the ineffable poignancy of bearing up bravely, with a realistically hope-filled heart, living & loving one's best, when all seems lost in the fear-infused daily regimen of life in a crushingly veiled time/place. Though one may be travelling in darkness, yet one is travelling.




The Cool, Cool River

Moves like a fist through the traffic
Anger and no one can heal it
Shoves a little bump into the momentum
It's just a little lump
But you feel it
In the creases and the shadows
A rattling deep emotion
The cool, cool river
Sweeps the wild, wide ocean

Yes Boss. The government handshake
Yes Boss. The pressure of language
Yes Boss. This is still water
The face at the edge of the bank of
The cool, the cool river
The cool, the cool river

I believe in the future
I may live in my car
My radio tuned to
The voice of a star
Some dogs barking at the break of dawn
Lightning pushes the edge of a thunderstorm
And these old hopes and fears
Still at my side

Anger and no one can heal it
Slides through the metal detector
Lives like a mole in a motel
A slide in a slide projector
The cool, cool river
Sweeps the wild, wide ocean
The rage, the rage of love turns inward
To prayers of devotion
And these prayers are
The constant road across the wilderness
These prayers are
These prayers are the memory of God
The memory of God

I believe in the future
We shall suffer no more
Maybe not in my lifetime
But in yours I feel sure
Some dogs barking at the break of dawn
Lightning pushes the edges of a thunderstorm
And these streets
Quiet as a sleeping army
Send their battered dreams to heaven, to heaven
For the mother's restless son
Who is a witness to, who is a warrior
Who denies his urge to break and run

Who says: Hard times?
I'm used to them
The speeding planet burns
I'm used to that
My life's so common it disappears
And sometimes even music
Cannot substitute for tears

There are some thoughtful comments regarding this song here:
http://www.songmeanings.net/songs/view/3...858483988/


>>Secondly-- & speaking of travelling-- a song apparently about watching one's same-species incarnate beloved literally fly away-- heart-breakingly so-- up & out of one's life; how can something as possibly terrible as this be processed positively, in the midst of the same regimen as alluded to above? Again, ineffably poignant even at this everyday level.

But then again, I've read that "in mystic poetry it is always [left] vague that the beloved is [in fact] a real woman, [or a] saint, or God. The real nature of the beloved is always hidden. This is the true beauty of mystic poetry"...




She Moves On

I feel good
It's a fine day
The way the sun hits off the runway
A cloud shifts
The plane lifts
She moves on

But feel the bite
Whenever you believe that
You'll be lost and love will find you
When the road bends
And the song ends
She moves on

I know the reason I
Feel so blessed
My heart still splashes
Inside my chest, but she
She is like a top
She cannot stop
She moves on

A sympathetic stranger
Lights a candle in the middle of the night
Her voice cracks
She jumps back
But she moves on, moves on

She says Ooh my storybook lover
You have underestimated my power
As you shortly will discover

Then I fall to my knees
Shake a rattle at the skies
And I'm afraid that I'll be taken
Abandoned, forsaken
In her cold coffee eyes

She can't sleep now
The moon is red
She fights a fever
She burns in bed
She needs to talk so
We take a walk
Down in the maroon light

She says Maybe these emotions are
As near to love as love will ever be?
So I agree
Then the moon breaks
She takes the corner -- that's all she takes
She moves on

She says Ooh my storybook lover
You have underestimated my power
As you shortly will discover

Then I fall to my knees
I grow weak, I go slack
As if she'd captured the breath of my
Voice in a bottle
And I can't catch it back

But I feel good
It's a fine day
The way the sun hits off the run way
A cloud shifts
The plane lifts
She moves on


Combining the ideas of a ever-refreshing cooling river, & a profoundly disquieting shifting, lifting, & moving on-- all in the context of doing one's best in a multilevel-catalyst experience where what happens next depends solely on your highest effort, I am minded of this ancient tale:
https://web.archive.org/web/201603240253...listen.htm
(Small world!-- this is a website of one of Bring4th's clan)

Cheers! to all