I knew it’d been a long while since the last time I wrote anything here, but I didn’t realize it had been over five months. It scares me a bit, to tell you the truth, when I see the dateline of that last entry. I use writing, more than anything else, to purge and name the spinning thoughts in my head.
When they spin and spin without release, too often they get so garbled over time that I begin to lose the realizations I’ve come to … and allowing that loss does a disservice to my mind and to my desire to find myself and my place in the world. It discredits those realizations, and makes it so much harder for me to yank my creativity from the haze of my daily routines.
For tonight, right now, I want to post some lyrics on here, from a CD my uncle sent me a few months back. The guy’s name is David Wilcox … and I’ve found the messages behind his music incredibly refreshing. The song below is about as close to a verbalization of my feelings on ‘faith’ and ‘God’ and ‘trusting in the Goodness’ around me as I have ever seen … and I’ve held the message close to my core since I first heard this song. So I guess this is a bit heavy … but oh well. If you’re reading this, you’re probably used to it.
So here it is – "Show the Way," by David Wilcox:
"You say you see no hope, you say you see no reason
We should dream that the world would ever change,
You're saying love is foolish to believe
'Cause there'll always be some crazy with an army or a knife
To wake you from your day dream, put the fear back in your life ...
Look, if someone wrote a play,
Just to glorify what's stronger than hate,
Would they not arrange the stage
To look as if the hero came too late?
He's almost in defeat -- it's looking like the evil side will win,
So on the edge of every seat, from the moment that the whole thing begins …
It is love that mixed the mortar
And it has been love that stacked these stones
And it is love that made the stage here
Although it looks like we're alone
In this scene set in shadows
Like the night is here to stay
There is evil cast around us
But it's love that wrote this play...
For in this darkness love can show the way.
So now the stage is set.
You feel you own heart beating in your chest.
This life's not over yet.
So we get up on our feet and do our best.
We play against the fear.
We play against the reasons not to try
We're playing for the tears burning in the happy angel's eyes ...
For it's love that mixed the mortar.
It was love that stacked these stones.
It was love that made the stage here --
And made it feel like we're alone.
In this scene set in shadows
Like the night is here to stay
There is evil cast around us
But it's love that wrote this play...
For in this darkness love can show the way."
Too often I find myself listening to the “reasons not to try” – the reasons which seem to line up one after another, stretching on without end. I find myself wanting to give in to the fear that I’m never going to find my way and never going to get myself on a track I can be truly proud of. But it’s senseless worry.
"We play against the fear. We play against the reasons not to try."
Literature has used the metaphor countless times: life as a stage … life as a play … and our actions within that play, upon this stage of life, are described to different effect depending upon the impression the author is shooting for. Maybe the most famous of all of them is the one below, from the Godfather of literature himself:
"Life's but a walking shadow, a poor player,
that struts and frets his hour upon the stage,
and then is heard no more.
It is a tale told by an idiot,
full of sound and fury, signifying nothing."
- William Shakespeare (Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5)
The setup is a little different, but the idea is essentially the same. Your life on earth is like an actor’s part upon a stage, and the curtain’s got to come down at some point. That much I think we all agree upon. It’s the part about "signifying nothing" where people start riffing and coming up with their own ideas.
I think I’ll go with Wilcox’s version. Shakespeare’s sounds too much like one of those "reasons not to try," to me, and it discounts the very author of that play. Now, obviously, some people don’t believe this whole show has an author, and I respect their right to that feeling.
My belief is that there is a higher power … that there is an author to our existence, and the only concrete proof we’ll ever have of that ‘entity,’ whatever you want to call it, is the love we find in ourselves and refract out to the world – or the love we find emanating from others.
Our world’s a crazy place these days. It’s hard to go from day to day with a sustaining belief in a concept like an overarching love – or in "peace, love and understanding," as Elvis Costello so eloquently put it (my friend Freddie keeps playing that song at his shows as a tribute to those fighting and dying in Iraq, and every time he plays it, I marvel at how fitting the lyrics really are).
But when you look at Costello’s words, when you look at Wilcox’s words, when you look at the words to so many other protest songs, so many other writings searching for hope amidst the darkness, isn’t it the same spirit and the same underlying query behind all of them?
Wilcox writes:
"You say you see no hope, you say you see no reason
We should dream that the world would ever change,
You're saying love is foolish to believe
'Cause there'll always be some crazy with an army or a knife
To wake you from your day dream, put the fear back in your life ..."
Costello writes:
"As I walk through
This wicked world,
Searchin' for light in the darkness of insanity,
I ask myself
Is all hope lost?
Is there only pain and hatred, and misery?
And each time I feel like this inside,
There's one thing I wanna know:
What's so funny 'bout peace love and understanding?
What's so funny 'bout peace love and understanding?
And as I walked on
Through troubled times
My spirit gets so downhearted sometimes.
So where are the strong?
And who are the trusted?
And where is the harmony?
Sweet harmony."
… You see it, right? They’re both confronting the same issue, the same “wickedness” – because it’s so pervasive sometime that it’s unbearable, and their art form was their greatest expression … their best chance of reaching sympathetic minds.
So while I’m not trying to pull this all together into some neat synopsis, I think it’s all coming out for a reason.
I think we all face a choice, as we grow up and grow older, of whether we’ll become a voice for change, or whether we’ll slide into the numbness of conformity presented by the 40 hour work week, the endless creature comforts, the countless distractions. Ours is a country rife with opportunities … and if we’re lucky enough to have been born into middle class, “American” families, I think that’s probably the greatest lottery we’ll ever win.
The problems start when people start to feel entitled. We’re not entitled to anything. What good is freedom, what good are comfort and security and a life of plenty, if we don’t all use that status to produce some change in the world … and a change for the better? To be borne into a country like this and to assume that conformity is all that’s asked of us – that strikes me as painfully short-sighted and arrogant.
Costello asks: Who are the strong?
I think your answer to that is perhaps the greatest statement of your morality you can make. Strength has been mislabeled in our society … just take a look at the talking points of most of the presidential candidates on "National Security," and you’ll see that they’re talking about violence. It has become "strong" in our country not to hold talks with our enemies if they disagree with us. It has become "strong" to turn a blind eye to whatever happens outside our borders. It has become "strong" to call people who are against the senseless death in Iraq “un-American."
But what if strength were viewed as the culmination of all our highest ideals? As the achievement of peace, love and understanding? Would we see diplomacy work its way back into our foreign relations? Would we see respect for discordant ideas work its way back into the speeches of our leaders?
I believe that any American worth his or her salt should answer a few questions for themselves, untrammeled by the stale definitions passed around in politics and in the news: Just who are the strong, anyway? What is the burden that comes along with our freedoms?
I believe that the strong are the people who still believe in love … and who seek it out every day, no matter what their situations. They’re the people who long to communicate with others, in any form, because they believe that all of us can inspire each other to greater heights. They’re the people who find a way to impact the world, based on their own special gifts.
The burden of freedom, in turn, is to realize your own strength, and to use it to bring happiness into your own life and the lives of as many others as you possibly can.
So, as if this post hasn’t been long enough, or filled with enough quotes, here’s a few for the road, which I think have inspired a lot of this stuff. I didn’t set out to write something this long or this ideological … but hey, it is what it is. Big or small, individual or global, I think a lot of these issues boil down to the same core questions.
___
“Lord, help me to shoulder the burden of freedom
And give me the courage to be what I can.”
__
“When they burn your brother down in the name of Freedom,
I don't care if it's left or right
It's wrong
If that's all they can do then you don't need 'em --
You're the one, Wild American.”
__
"Not in my name, not on my ground
I want nothing but the ending of the war.
No more killing, or it's over --
And the mystery won't matter anymore."
Broken dreamers, broken rules,
Broken-hearted people just like me and you.
We are children of the stars,
Don't blame God, I swear to God he's crying too."
__
From Kris Kristofferson’s songs "Burden of Freedom," "Wild American," and "In the News," respectively.
Here are some links to Wilcox and Kristofferson:
Kris Kristofferson
(The new ablum's incredible ... but all of his songs are poetic and powerful)
David Wilcox
(You can listen to "Show the Way" via a stream on this site. Check it out if you're interested. Try "Two Roads Diverge," too.
