So often I pray - and think - through songs. On Sunday, August 17th at our rock and soul gig, I am going to do a prayer/lament/tribute to my brother Robin Williams. As I wrestled with what song worked, I was led back to "Good Morning, Vietnam." For so many reasons, I still love that one - and one of the early tunes is "Nowhere to Run" by Motown's incomparable Martha and the Vandellas. As you can hear from their pop take on this song, it is kind of wild and fun. (This clip, however, is fascinating in its mix of both "Good Morning, Vietnam" and "ApocalypseNow" and the way Americans have mixed sex and violence but that's for another commentary.)
For our gig, however, I think the songs has to be stripped down - played just on my acoustic guitar with a few vocal harmonies adding that unnerving drone - and shared simply with compassion and tenderness. In this way, the words cut through with an irony that evokes sorrow, mourning as well as honest respect for this wounded but generous artist:
Nowhere to run to, baby, nowhere to hide...every where I go, I see your face, every step I take, you take with me... each night as I sleep, into my heart you creep, I wake up feeling sorry I met you, hoping soon that I'll forget you: nowhere to run, baby, nowhere to hide.
Rest in peace, brother man, and know we LOVE you.
RJ-- I have never understood why people regret meeting other people even when it doesn't work out-- like in that song (a good song, by the way) but I would change the part about "feeling sorry I met you, hoping soon that I'll forget you." Even in painful relationships, I have never regretted the care, the knowing, the love. I guess I am too much the idealist. But seriously, each person who arrives in our lives has something special that joins to our soul-- it's a mutual soul sharing--even when it's weird or different or unintended or difficult. But sometimes, I have heard people in divorce saying anger filled "I wish I never met you." It always tears at my heart. Because...it's like they have to say that in order to get the energy to leave??? I don't know.
ReplyDeleteOn a different note, here is a wonderful quote that relates to your posting: "Perhaps in the end that is what wayfinding amounts to: learning how to allow for accident, and make way for blessing." by Lynn Darling, Out of the Woods, a memoir.
I wish all of us many happy blessings, and the allowance of crazy (redemptive) accidents in the soul/heart.