The Pearl

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

No comments here?! How can that be?! It can be read to be about crusaders and the seemingly endless fighting and how weary they are and how abandoned they seem.
Or, if we take "Oh the dragons are going to fly tonight" with "the dragons" being a reference to heroin "ride the dragon" then it's about heroin addicts and how alienated they are from the world and society in general. Read the lyrics both ways and you might see this as one of the most dual natured songs ever written. Brilliant.

Surely there are some Emmylou fans out there. This is probably my fave song of her extensive catalog. In Wrecking Ball and Red Dirt Girl she's done something that very few artists achieve: she's essentially invented a unique genre that, for want of a better term, could be called "alternative country" (yeah I know that sucks. We need a better term.) The line "And fear the silence is the voice of God" gives me chills every time I hear it, and I think the meaning of the song can be summed up in the final line of the last verse: Until we behold the pain become the pearl". The Buddha said that "life is suffering". Emmylou is saying that our task is to somehow transform that suffering into something of beauty. And yes, dolfan, it IS brilliant.

These three comments are wonderful and share a window into possible meanings, if not only just individual impression and meanings. \n\nYes there are so many ELH fans. The woman is a legend, icon, “Lost (and found) Prophet” and a Pearl herself. I had a chance to meet and witness her grace and compassion pre-show with my in-laws and Grammy-in-law before a show in LA. I’m sure she had pre-show things to do, but she welcomed us none-the-less, and with the highest demonstration of zen-like-in-the-moment priority of honor for each of us. \n\nI resonate most with the most recent post in the string, but all are enlightened. \n\nThe best lyrics or art have open broad meanings that other’s will gain insights and even enlightened the poet/artist themselves. Like something greater [g-o-d]is happening through the expressive, reflective, collective process. \n\nI think Emmy often speaks to the pain of losing a soulmate but also being a collective of artists who truly seek the beauty and tastes of heaven that we are wired to want, just like the angels (like dragons - Satan the light-bringer was metaphorically described as a beautiful dragon) who dwelt in heaven but were hurled to the earth: unquenchable appetites for divine beauty at least then maybe even two dangerous places on the sea.