March 23 : Personal by Domestic Hermit
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I downloaded Audrey Assad‘s cover of my all-time favourite song, “Wish you were here“, this morning. (As soon as a version is available on YouTube I’ll post it.) I have been struck by how Existentialist the lyrics are.
The Wikiepdia article states that “The song’s lyrics encompass writer Roger Waters’ feelings of alienation from other people.” As I have been listening to it during the day I can see more clearly how the song is really about just that – alienation. But maybe it is about more than just alienation from other people. The song has an element of the soul’s search for God – like the journey described by St Augustine in his Confessions – especially with the opening line about heaven and hell.
Maybe St Augustine’s famous description of his conversion is a counterpoint to the song:
Too late did I love You, O Fairness, so ancient, and yet so new! Too late did I love You! For behold, You were within, and I without, and there did I seek You; I, unlovely, rushed heedlessly among the things of beauty You made. You were with me, but I was not with You. Those things kept me far from You, which, unless they were in You, were not. You called, and cried aloud, and forced open my deafness. You gleamed and shine, and chase away my blindness. You exhaled odours, and I drew in my breath and do pant after You. I tasted, and do hunger and thirst. You touched me, and I burned for Your peace. (10.27.38)
The alienation is not primarily from other people but from ourselves and God. Anyway, here are the lyrics to the song:
So, so you think you can tell Heaven from Hell,
blue skies from pain.
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil?
Do you think you can tell?
And did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees?
Hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?
How I wish, how I wish you were here.
We’re just two lost souls swimming in a fish bowl, year after year,
Running over the same old ground.
What have you found? The same old fears.
Wish you were here.