Have you ever had the experience of reciting words or phrases during the night when you are on the cusp of dreaming, words that then take on a certain poetic or spiritual resonance? There's something about these dream words, these nighttime words, that can manifest a uniquely powerful simplicity, a power not always there in the light of day, when simplicity can appear simplistic. Sometimes these words manifest in songs. A great example is Townes Van Zandt's "If I Needed You," a song he got in its entirety in a dream. Here's how it starts: "If I needed you, would you come to me? / Would you come to me for to ease my pain? / If you needed me, I would come to you / I would swim the seas for to ease your pain." Here, we see the hallmarks of dream messages. There is the directness that might seem too prosaic to the analytical mind, and there is all that repetition, which one's internal editor might find to be too much, preferring instead to substitute a new phrase for the sake of variety. There is the archaic usage, “for to.” And "swim the seas" might just be too much of a cliche. But when you hear Townes sing it, you get a deep down sense that the truth of all relationships is here, the truth of ten thousand novels, and all the scriptures too.
The last time I had a profound nighttime experience like this, it was also in the form of song lyrics, though not lyrics of my "own." At some point in the very early morning, maybe at 2 or 3, I laid there in bed and silently recited to myself, over and over, these familiar words. "This is for all the lonely people / thinking that life has passed them by / Don't give up / Until you drink from the silver cup / And ride that highway in the sky." We all knew this song by America from the radio growing up. It's a good song, but I can't say it ever meant that much to me. I don't own any of their records, and might not have heard that song in decades. But there it was in my liminal sleep mind. I don't know how it got there, but it gave me a feeling I never got from hearing that song on the radio. My spirit was imbued with a sense of the rightness of things. It was the sense revealed in the prayer of Julian of Norwich in the 14th century, who was ill from a pandemic, and therefore in isolation, when a vision inspired her to say, “all shall be well, and all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well.” There it is, the simplicity and the repetition, and the power to reach people across the centuries. There's a reason why my old friend and co-worker Bill chose these words to be read at his memorial service when he finally succumbed to the AIDS. It's a spiritual reason.
Comments
Post a Comment