| The Tallest Man on Earth – The Wild Hunt Lyrics | 12 years ago |
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To me the song is about a transcendental perspective: surrendering to one's true size, place, and time in the larger world. Because of our amazing brains, a human usually experiences life as a narrative centering around a self. Our attention is largely occupied by the meaning we create and interpret in human-sized events -- e.g. a conversation, a relationship, a song, a party, an election, trouble at work. These are the things we generally experience as important. But there are events of much greater magnitude going-on all the time that human consciousness has difficulty computing. The water cycle on earth. The passage of energy from the sun to plant storage to animal respiration to behavior to decomposition to further storage or respiration. The genetic evolution of species over hundreds of millions of years, and ongoing. Every individual human is a tiny participating speck in each of these, and we learn that in science class, but rarely do we experience ourselves or our lives from that perspective. The writer of this song is seeing the scope of his own life from that larger perspective. The length of his life is short like a season. Within that time he must live and make choices and do the things that humans do, but he's liberated from the illusion that they're of much importance. He finds freedom in surrendering to the wild hunt -- the giant-sized powers and movements far out of his control. |
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| Chris Thile – Here and Heaven Lyrics | 13 years ago |
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Sometimes people choose relationships to avoid rather than experience intimacy. Sometimes our "fear of failure" prevents us from believing we can have the connection and edification we really want and deserve with another person. We choose partners we don't really admire or feel safe with or who allow us to maintain our habitual emotional distance. building a shed--building a relationship Between here and heaven, between the wait and the wedding--between the past relationships we've had and the ones we really want and deserve, a stopping or waiting place along the way Or as long as we both shall be dead to the world--as long as we continue to make ourselves unavailable to opportunities for real intimacy that the world is constantly presenting to us We can practice our lines--in this relationship, we can continue repeating the habits and messages that make us feel safe and keep us guarded against the risk of vulnerability and intimacy Fall, not winter, spring, not summer, cool, not cold And it’s warm, not hot--these relationships are exciting, fun, romantic, but they don't penetrate to the deepest parts of ourselves With an arrow and bow--tools for hunting, for finding more partners and some seeds left to sow--the proverbial desire for excitement, newness, and a kind of lonely freedom and power we are staking our claim On ground so fertile, we forget who we’ve hurt along the way--there are so many people in the city or world who can fill these roles for us that they become interchangeable and forgettable And reach out for a strange hand to hold--we distract ourselves from acknowledging our patterns by finding someone new to occupy our attention Someone strong, but not bold enough to tear down the wall--these partners have attractive qualities, so it's easy to justify to ourselves and our friends why we keep choosing them, though none of them ever really get close to us ‘Cause we aren’t lost enough to find--we haven't felt our loneliness acutely or clearly enough to recognize it and change this pattern that perpetuates it the stars aren’t crossed why align 'em--nothing seems dramatically wrong, so we can justify why we aren't trying something new or trying to change And why fall hard not soft--so why risk intimacy? why not let it be cute or literary, like a movie? |
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