Send Your Love

You know what I disliked about this? Yes. Your notion of never put off for tomorrow what you can do today. While I've been sitting here putting off for tomorrow what I have ample time to do today. So? So what? Send it now. Well duh. Guess I could. Anyone who reads this will think you-we are quite corny. We've been for years. However, you're right and that's part of the problem. Talk love--something we could really use--and people suck their teeth and ask you to take it into another room.
Can you remedy this? Do I look like I can? To me you do but then, that's me. Press Send. See what happens. I dare you. Okay, I double dare you. I triple dare you. The trinity lock. You don't stand a chance of slipping past this one.

I knew I should have asked more questions ... Even if you had ....

'Send Your Love' addresses a lot of the issues you're talking about. When you sing a line like, "No religion but sex and music," it raises notions about what religion means in the West, what religion means in Islam, what people do in the name of religion and what could be done more productively in its name. At the same time the record is soaked in all kinds of religious imagery. So much of your writing is.

[Sting]: I've always been fascinated by religion. Although I don't belong to a denomination, I regard myself as highly religious. I just felt, in light of Sept. 11 and the subsequent struggle, that religion had a lot to answer for. And religion needed in the future to be redefined. I think it's been used in a very narrow political sense of closing down who we are. In other words, if you belong to my religion, then you are family, if you don't then you're not family - them and us, black and white, good and evil. People imagining that God looks like they do. Well I don't think God's an Episcopalian or a Catholic or Islamic or Jewish. I think He, She or It is bigger than all of that. And religion needs to address that. It shouldn't be so petty. There has to be a larger thought. So I had to redefine religion for myself. What are my religions? Music is one of my religions, where I can sense the infinite. And the other is love. Sexual love, romantic love. My relationship with my wife, for example, I regard as a devotional practice. It's a way of approaching eternity, infinity, the impossible things that we simply can't understand. Love gives us a window onto that. So the album is really about that - defining religion. I say a very polemic statement: "There's no religion but sex and music." This is my little polemic. It might embarrass some people, it might insult some people. I don't mean it to. I'm just saying for me this is what my religion is. God created both.

I came across suggestions that the beginning lyrics of “Send Your Love” were probably inspired by William Blake’s “Auguries of Innocence.” One writer felt he could have mentioned this and he may have in some other interview. I don’t know. I did find it interesting that this was noted by some of his fans—one of which immediately declared it plagiarism—evidently not realizing that Blake’s work is public domain. No one else really offered a possible explanation—funny how fans can be. I also find it enlightening that we can all obviously leap to conclusions [I seem to have a real “talent” for it] because of a single omission while failing to realize we haven’t had the person we are casting even mild aspersions at—wired for sound.

"Auguries of Innocence"

To see a world in a grain of sand, And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour.

"Bad poets borrow. Good poets steal." ; ) Sting names William Blake and Blake's view on religion as an inspiration to this song in his book "Lyrics".

Actually, I think the whole lyrics read like a poem, I love them, and I feel they were somehow wasted on the disco-like music.

"You see the stars are moving so slowly But still the earth is moving so fast Can't you see the moon is so lonely She's still trapped in the pain of the past"

Great lines! They pretty much sum up the time we live in - in a very poetic way. For those who prefer prose, there's the "no religion but sex and music ..." paragraph. ; )

I see here 'religion' meaning something more than what people might label as a religion, but rather a state of being in which one is harmonized with the world and any spiritual world that may exist, above and beyond a certain creed.