| James Taylor – Boatman Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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According to JT, this is his brother Livingston's poem about how he saved his marriage. There is a certain irony, I would say, in the river and the mountain (a river's source) asking the boatman to deliver him. The lyrics at the end on the original album go "Holy roller, I am the river..." Instead of 'Boatman.' Indicating a certain (perhaps vague) religious idea. Also, consider the meaning of the chorus if you parse the 'I am' as not an instance of the verb 'to be' in the first person singular, but as instead one of the names of God ('I am that I am') You would have to read more about Livingston Taylor to know for certain if he indeed intends the I AM to be parsed this way, but it makes for an interesting interpretation of the chorus. |
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| James Taylor – Gaia Lyrics | 16 years ago |
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I agree this song is nice, at least to listen to. It's probably one of his best compositions and the poetry itself is beautiful, but it is an interesting knot. One on hand, I have to agree with the general sentiment, that the cosmos is beautiful, including this earth. But on the other hand, you have to wonder what 'saving us from us' via Gaia would mean. Maybe it shows the limit of how far religious sentiment and devotion can go without some kind of guidance. It's something many poets have struggled with, the notion of the beauty of the world, but its ugliness, and the struggle of whether it is ugly because of and in man's acts, or because he in his condition cannot see its beauty. Long prior to industrialization poets wondered on the same topic, so while I would tend to think that what inspires JT (as it does many left-leaning poets) is a reaction against industry and what it does to the cosmos when left unchecked, I can't say that this really the heart of the matter. But I find the poem while being beautiful too shallow for my taste. It seems to be an ode to the beloved, but it does not (and he admits it in the penultimate stanza) reach beyond the visible. |
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