| Emmylou Harris – The Pearl Lyrics | 15 years ago |
|
Oh, this song gets me. The Pearl is one of my favorite songs of despair and sorrow. I don't think Emmylou wrote it about the Crusades or heroin addiction. I think that's taking a one-dimensional, literal interpretation about a set of metaphors that are much more expressive about the condition of our hearts. As she says, "It is the heart that kills us in the end." I think it’s fundamentally a song about you. And I. It’s a broken-hearted song about life and hopelessness. Straight-up. It’s about that feeling you get that things are only going to get worse. It’s about the eternal separation between the perfect creator and the despairing creation. It’s about your struggle against all the weariness of this life, all the pointlessness you feel when you look at how far you’ve walked. It’s about never being able to find happiness, no matter how much you have. It’s about being neglected and alone, finding that even God has abandoned or forgotten you. It’s about the desperate cry clinging to any last crumb of hope. It’s about the relentlessness of age and time. It’s about our weaknesses. It’s about the empty resignation that comes at the end. It’s loss and fear, shame and anger, tears and ache. And yet, she asks if maybe the pain produces something good. Emmylou said this about it: “I think this lyric is dealing with depression and angst and mortality. But I know that the place the song was going to get to was that there has to be a reason for the pain that everyone experiences. And I was so taken with the image of the pain that the oyster must go through with the grain of sand inside that becomes a pearl. That is the metaphor: your pain ultimately becomes something beautiful.” Pretty straight-forward. But rich in imagery. Touching in its vulnerability. I've felt all these things in life. I think of my father-in-law and his failed struggle with cancer. I think of my lonely widowed mother-in-law. I think of the friend who's lost in love more times than he can keep track of. I think of the woman I met who watched her parents killed when she was a young girl. I think about the guy begging money for me who used to have a good job selling tires before his nervous breakdown. I think of the kid who killed himself and the girl who ran away. And I'm not preaching, but I think of something Jesus said: “…the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant looking for fine pearls. When he found one of great value, he went away and sold everything he had and bought it.” This is the only reason I'm not an alcoholic alone and suicidal. I think I'm the merchant who found the pearl and the pearl itself. Oh I love this song. There's a Nashville songwriter who does a great version of it live, Matthew Perryman Jones: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iHU7mzpuNOc |
|
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.