| Jackson Browne – Before The Deluge Lyrics | 11 years ago |
| I saw Jackson Browne at the Santa Cruz Civic Auditorium last night, and he closed with this song as the second encore. First, I agree with the comment that what a song means is whatever it means to you. That being said, here's what this song means to me. I'm the same age as Jackson Browne, and I've followed his music since I was in my twenties. When he says, "Some of them were dreamers, some of them were fools...," "Some of them knew pleasure, some of them knew pain...," and "Some of them were angry at the way the earth was abused..." he is talking about the generation who came of age in the '60s. We thought we could make big changes by embracing the natural world and protecting the earth from the corporate abusers who learned "..to forge her beauty into power." But our wings became tarnished by live-for-moment hedonism (shallow sexuality and drug use), and we either burned out or gave in to the need to compromise our ideals to survive in the material world. And though we may have continued to struggle to protect the fragile environment, in his chilling pre-apocalyptic vision, the artist realized that it was too late--the tipping point had been reached. We were "..confused by the magnitude of her fury in the final hour." This song is more relevant today than ever, as we begin to understand that it is the abuse of the earth rather than nuclear Armageddon that is likely to seal our fate. As it says in Ecclesiastes, "Men go and come, but the earth abides." those of us with children can only hope that they might be among the ones who are spared in the "naked dawn" when "only a few survived." We are blessed by the beauty and artistry we are capable of creating; cursed by the greed and short-sightedness that have lead us to the brink of the seemingly inevitable massive die-off of our species. "Let creation reveal its secrets by and by." | |
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