Colors of the Sun

"Pompous Pig" summed up the most salient point of the song, the rejection of established religion as a path to salvation. This would have easily resonated with baby-boomers in the late 60s, and you might even say they had already heard this message many times before.

I'm much less struck by the polemical in this song than how it evokes my own walks in natural areas, those expanses of time when there was nothing to do but look around, and nothing to hear, except the sound of the tides or wind through the trees. Even scattered bird calls reinforce the feeling that human life-as-usual is not the center of the universe--or that the universe at hand is much more spacious. In the cover of this song by Tom Rush, I have always pictured some setting where you can see for miles and miles with no sign of human habitation.

The "colors of the sun" and even the glint of a coin are points of light that can be noticed by turning an eye, not to the skies, but closer to the ground, just as listening to wind through the trees allows you to pick up what might be thought of as the radiance of sound that we call harmony.

I wouldn't be surprised if Browne had been exposed to the evocation of childhood in Wordsworth's "Ode: Intimations of Immortality," with the famous part--"The earth, and every common sight, To me did seem apparelled in celestial light."

I was also reminded of a passage in Baudelaire's "La Vie antérieure" ("The Life Before"):

"Les houles, en roulant les images des cieux, Mêlaient d'une façon solennelle et mystique Les tout-puissants accords de leur riche musique Aux couleurs du couchant reflété par mes yeux."

("The swells, unfurling pictures of skies, Interweave solemnly and mystically The all-powerful chords of their splendorous music With colors of a sunset reflected in my eyes.")

It can be argued that both writers were invocation an idea of a past life, whether autobiographically in Wordsworth, or in Baudelaire as a more immediate connection to, or absorption in, nature (complete with a French imperialist fantasy of "nobles sauvages").

In the Rolling Stone review of Browne's album "For Everyman," "Colors of the Sun" was dismissed as an "oversimplified, childish indictment." I won't assume Browne had read Baudelaire, but the song might be less about a teen or young adult in rebellion than someone who's also remembering or maybe tactically re-experiencing childhood--something as common as a day at the beach. Coming of age is not just about conflict with an older generation; it's about growing into larger dimensions, whether experienced as a distance to your own past or being tuned into, or "woke" to, a broader world around you.

If the song were only about disillusionment and teen rebellion, it would be of little interest. But this take overlooks what's laid out at the beginning of the song, and probably more important, even if more elusive and more mood than message: the capacity for wonder and the urge (as well as the power) to find connections. It's what poets do all the time (as William Carlos Williams directs them: "No ideas except in things"). The quoted passage from Baudelaire also suggests that forces of nature can register as a religious experience--the solemn and mystical chords that Baudelaire might have heard from a church organ, not to mention his notion (in "Correspondances") of nature as a temple with its own "forest of symbols."

Browne doesn't just rehash the cultural and intellectual past in a nebulous way. He's actually much more straightforward, especially here: "Awake to understand you are not dreaming, It is not seeming to just be this way" (I can only construe "seaming" above as a typo). This isn't about rebelling or being disillusioned, let alone wearing erudition on his sleeve, but affirming a reality, whether outward and perceivable, or the inward resonance of a feeling. And to know that feeling, you don't have to be a credentialed poet or scholar.

We can sneer at the glorification of youth culture 50 years ago that now looks dated and silly, but we can also see something more imperishable in the song--that plunge into something wider beyond or deeper within (through memory or creative "perception of relations") that can be experienced by people in any generation.

Within a year or two after this song came out, the Beach Boys would make the connection to Wordsworth more explicit in their "Surf's Up" album. But I'm more taken by Browne's "wake to understand," that kind of moment when you snap out of it, only to find it was the trance that was real.

I love the line "disillusioned savior search the sky, wanting just to show somenone the way." To me the line isabout someone who has visions of saving people via his thoughts and ideas, but can't find anyone to listen.

"...Asking all the people passing by Doesn't anybody want the way"

makes me think of some religious fanatic on the street in New York City shouting verses, as business people pass briskly buy, not listening...

...as they "scuffle with the crowd to get their share, and fall behind their little bits of time."

"I say goodbye to Joseph and Maria," intrigues me. Joseph is a Biblical name, and Maria, latin / spanish for Mary...

seems to be about an individual who neither wants to be a part of that material world, nor do they want to hide in an orthodox religion, so they are left only to explore and search on their own for some meaning.

Near the start of the song, he refers to “picking for a coin” and that as he does so, “many other tiny worlds go singing past my hand.” He could be saying: “As I picked for a coin in my pocket, the tiny worlds of the people who held this coin before me went singing past my hand.”

The coin made him think of the tiny worlds of the other people who owned the coin. This makes sense because the next part of the song encourages us to awake to see the reality (that we are not dreaming - it really is this way) … that the lives of most humans are occupied by their efforts to “scuffle with the crowd to get their share” and “conquer little bits of time.”



The “tiny worlds” of the first section ties in with the “little bits of time” that people manage to conquer during their lives. The coin of the earlier verse ties in with the fact that people getting their share involves money.



But despite getting their share (their piece of the pie) and conquering little bits of time, they still “fall” and they end up on their death beds drawing “numbers in the air.” When you die, your money is worthless and doesn’t do anything: it’s like writing numbers in the air. People have spent their lives scuffling for their share, and when they die and leave their bodies, it’s worthless and does them no good. You can’t take your share with you: it’s just numbers in the air.

In the next verse, he continues with the air theme saying that he hears “voices in the air” coming from the trees and he contrasts their “sympathetic harmony,” with another allusion to materialism: “many shiny surfaces” that are “clinging.” This is along the lines of the classic saying “all that glitters is not gold.” Likewise, an occasional theme of spiritual people who are wary of materialism is to talk about the “shiny things” of the world of materialism trying to capture their attention.

Next he conveys that he’s not going to take the same path because he’s not going to plan his life out to make sure he gets his share, and he pointedly says that he won’t lose out by doing this. 


Then he talks about a savior in the sky (in the air) who knows the way, but finds that most people don't want to know the way. Combined with the next lines about Joseph and Mary, this seems to be an allusion to Jesus and his core teachings that pursuing money is not the way, and that pursuing love, goodness and kindness are the way.

This is expressed in dozens of well-known ways from the “it’s harder for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter heaven” to the story of the good Samaritan in which most people walk past the injured man because they are too busy on their way to getting their share. Ditto the saying “You can’t serve both money and God” with God sometimes referred to as “love” and “mercy.”



One correction to the lyrics on this site is that Jackson clearly sings: "I say goodbye to Joseph and Maria. They think they see another sky.” ... not "They think I see another sky.” Jackson sometimes uses “sky” to refer to the great beyond … so perhaps he’s saying Joseph and Maria have departed in that direction.


In the last line, Jackson indicates that he’s not the aforementioned savior by stating that he’ll “never free” Joseph and Maria. Maybe Jackson was a bit worried people would think he was saying that he was the “disillusioned savior’ so he put in the last line to make that clear. I don't think Jackson was making a pro-Christianity statement with the song … because he wasn’t Christian. I do think he was giving an anti-materialism message and used the allusion to Jesus to back his message up.

And he “might” have consciously or unconsciously tapped into a couple of other aspects of Judeo-Christian spiritual themes given 16 of the 38 parables are about money, and many are widely known by most of society. There’s no way to tell, but some of his other songs on his earlier albums have similar allusions or themes from Judeo-Christian spirituality. On the “Late for the Sky” album, he literally mentions the Bible.

Interestingly, Jackson’s statement in “Colors of the Sun” of I’m not going to plan it out and I won’t lose because of it … is very similar to this: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothes? … Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself.” (Matthew 6:25-34)



I think Jackson probably didn’t tap into the Bible for that part of the song, but it is interesting that his thinking is so similar.