Locomotive Breath

I learned a lot by reading many of you. This song started to have new meanings for me and also triggered me new thoughts.

I first thought was of Waiting for Godot from Samuel Beckett and its overwhelming sensation that time never stops. And the issue of no solution neither with God or without God, nor winning or losing. And the handle is like Godot, something that could stop the suffering but never comes or was stolen, the same. An ilussion, even if it comes the suffering will not stop.

At a universal level, all of us with different intensities, including the author of the song, feel somehow that way. It could be better or worse, with drugs, death, religion, modern life, old life or any addiction, winning or losing, with good or bad wife, victim or victimary. Whatever.

The images are wonderful and so powerful.

Silence howling: Haven't you ever hear it? A silence of no answers to the ultimate questions that hurts so much!

These things that happen to believers and non-believers, to modern man and to the traditional man, to the winner and the loser.

Catching angels as they fall: They are the falling angels like Satan or the falling angels of not believing or just falling angels. Cathching them for good or bad? Who knows?

The all time winner could be God or a human winner but could also be inside oneself, the image of winner we all have in mind (and cannot stop having it) and that makes a slave of us to it throughout our life. We all have an all time loser and an all time winner inside.

We always talk about "other things" when we write, but simultaneously we talk about ourselves at a different level of meaning.

We all have children jumping at the stations, for god or bad, who knows? We all have woman and best friend in bed hurting us in our mind, whatever it means (like low self esteem in some cases, for example).

I love the image of someone stealing the handle: God or Darwin or whoever is Charlie. But remember also that we (you who are reading this, myself, etc.) stole the handle and we have to face it. We are also responsible at some level.

Very-very interesting: I googled "Old Charlie" and found "MTA" in Wikipedia. It talks about a song written in 1948 called Charlie in the MTA: "The lyrics are about a man named Charlie trapped on Boston's subway system, then known as the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA)... It has become so entrenched in Boston that the city's subway system named its electronic card-based fare collection system the "CharlieCard" as a tribute to this song...The song's lyrics tell of Charlie, a man who gets aboard an MTA subway car. Charlie CAN'T GET OFF the subway as he didn't bring enough money for the "EXIT FARES" that were established to collect an increased fare without upgrading existing fare collection equipment.

When he got there the conductor told him, "One more nickel." Charlie could not get off that train.

Did he ever return, No he never returned And his fate is still unlearn'd He may ride forever 'neath the streets of Boston He's the man who never returned.

After the third line of the chorus, audiences familiar with the song often call out "Poor Old Charlie!"

In the Kingston Trio recording, after the final chorus, the song's lead singer Nick Reynolds speaks the words: "Et tu, Charlie?", an echo of Julius Caesar's famous "Et tu, Brute?" ("You too, Brutus?")."

(my comment: This sounds to me like that Charlie is at the same time a victim ("poor") and a victimary ("the one who killed". "That's all humanity" as is said in Waiting for Godot. Life moves and never returns for us, like Charlie)

Interesting coincidences, or not! Hope you enjoy it as I did!