Sea of Joy

I think that it has reference to Heaven; waiting in our boats to set sail to the next life. Encompassing the waiting we do in this world, until we set sail on the 'sea of joy' on our way to heaven. Also reference to Jesus; he wore a crown of thorns at the crucifixion. Sometimes people and other earthly things can block our 'view' of God and his heavenly kingdom.

This song has been truly my favorite song for over 40 years. It's meaning is clear to me. If you are familiar with Coleridge's poem, "The Rhime of the Ancient Mariner, " it would be clear to you as well. This song is about heroin. Coleridge, in his time, was addicted to opium. The poem has references to crawling skin, isolation, dreams and horror, as does this song, Sea of Joy. Even the title is a dead give away. Now go listen to it with this in mind and see if you can see what I see.

Maybe this song has the simplest meaning. The joy of the sea for the fisherman. He casts all cares of life away when he is on the sea!

the lyrics and the mood tell me this song is about death. very cool song.

I heard a story once that there was, at one of the slave departure points in Africa, a concrete tunnel that slaves were sent down, blindly and being tricked, which led to the slave ships. Hard to make out coherent meaning on this song (like so many songs...) but in the end fade out of the song Winwood sings "set them free". Makes me wonder if it was about the slave ships sailing on a (trickfully named) Sea of Joy. Aside from the intriguing lyrics, I just love the emotion and tempo of the whole thing, a favorite on a favorite album.

At the time I thought "Waiting in a boat to set sail" was about the time between taking LSD and when its effects began. Probably just me. I was well past xtianity and exploring Eastern spirituality then (so original :-) but even though I moved on to atheism and now naturalism, I still value this album as the nearest I get to spirituality.

Surveying the scene, the singer initially wonders about the reality of it all -- do the senses paint a real picture of the scene, or is his vision only a figment, a shadow of what is real? Regardless, a journey is about to unfold on a "Sea of Joy". But throughout we are provided only a sense of waiting -- can the singer ever even really begin his journey? Even after a door (a door of perception, perhaps an Aldous Huxley/LSD reference) opens, the voyage (to a higher consciousness . . . to God . . .to enlightenment . . . fill in the blank) has obstacles. First seems to be the singer himself -- when the door opens to another realm, the singer fears he sees only himself, that even a potential enlightenment is somehow tarnished by the singer's subjective vision of it. A repeated biblical reference to "thorns in my eyes" also threatens the vision of an experience entirely filled with joy. Finally, "you" and "concrete" blocks the vision. We could go on about what each of these obstacles mean, but to be general . . . What a drag, eh?

But can we ever really know the sea of joy? Won't our boats always be tethered to a reality we cannot fully escape? Yet won't we always yearn for the beauty of the vision of transcendent joy? And can we not create beauty that is its own reality, that we can experience, even if our boats cannot set sail, even if our own perceptions cannot fully realize the states we imagine . . . hmmmmmm . . . I'd say Stevie Winwood answers that last question with an emphatic "yes".