Box Of Rain

Yes! x0nix Your interpretation is so true! This is a classic that I've loved for more years than most of this community have been alive (like when it was new), but you have caught the ball and run for the touchdown here. Bravo!

May I suggest that the song is avtually about lack of clarity? "maybe you'll find direction around some corner where its been waiting to meet you." There is no clarity there, only a sugguestion that your destiny lies somewhere--and you NEVER know where!!!

To me the song is about fate, destiny, and trying to find meaning in life. But its impossible to find the meaning of life... no one will ever know. So you have to "look into any eyes" to find value, or simply "look out fo any window"...we need to find value in other people, random places, whatever, but it will never give you any "answers". Meaning is less tangible than answers. Its abstract, you find pockets of it in special places, but by no means can anyone ever find the meaning of life (the most abstract of any idea)

"Believe it if you need it or leave it if you dare"...life will keep going on whether you want it to or not, whether you find the answers or not (there are no answers) All you can do is take solice that the world is what it is... forever moving, constantly changing without God or fate or anyone providing any real answers to life's most difficult questions. All you can do is realize that you have a "short time to be there" and maybe "love will see you through". :)

RIP jerry

Your tongue is twisted
with words half spoken
and thoughts unclear.

either... when you take something back in the middle of saying it, your tongue literaly is discombobulated, typical of rambling confusion. lol

or your tongue is twisted= your one cryptic kinky **** and you like to see what happens when you tell somebody, unwittingly, only, half the story and pass pass your self off as a guru. again, lol
or
Your mouth is tied, because of somebody, told you wittingly or unwittingly, only, half the story/whatever and so on.
or
Your mouth was tied, before they could finish a sentence.
rain=sent from above
Sun and shower -
Wind and rain -
the sun and it's wide scope consistent effects makes it shower
the wind the gusto and it's focused energy can really bring down. From the Heavy, intense, sky.

none of that is how I hear this song

boom! bye

nah lol

Today was the first time I intentionally read the lyrics with lsd in place. The first time through it was pretty much how I always heard it. lsd=a storm of energy, emotion, and information,, all heaven sent""
lsd lights up all those little thinga-ma-gigs up there, in a cascading, down pouring, pattern.

what a long long time to be gone
what a short time to be there

you experience years, while your "there" physicaly for only 10min

or
lol

hahaha! you're so right about that.

@Samantha723
You speak of the Sacrament of the Church of the Dead . . . it's psychedelic communion.

ADH: The final words of the song are very affecting, you're right. They also have a number of Biblical and old folk music precursors, warning people to appreciate what (and who) they have in this life before those things (and people) are gone: I'm a short time here, but I'm a long time gone. BTW, all the people who were writing that PL wrote this song as a tribute to his father while the latter was dying of cancer in a hospital are correct. In fact, while GD was recording this album (American Beauty), PL would visit his dad either on the way to or back from the studio. It's true Hunter wrote most of the lyrics, but the idea was PL's, and referred to his feelings for his dying dad. The performing members of GD may sing lyrics that are largely written by either Hunter or Barlow, but they are not just automatons; their own lives, thoughts, feelings, etc. went into the songs (not just the melodies; the lyrics as well) and Hunter and Barlow took that into account in the writing.

As for the song being about acid, I'm afraid you're wrong, kemosabe. The GD certainly had a number of songs referring to the LSD experience (China Cat Sunflower, Dark Star, (That's It For) The Other One, etc.), but this one (BOR) is not specifically one of them.

Before I knew about PL's father, etc., I always thought the song was a bit of 1970 (post-hippie) nostalgia for 1965-66, before the positive vibe of the Haight-Ashbury scene was ruined by opportunists, scumbags, bad drugs, and Manson-type sociopaths preying on the innocents. By that time the Dead had long since abandoned their communal house at 710 Ashbury St. in the Haight and were living suburban upper-bourgeois existences in Marin County, but still pining for the original sense of community of four to five years earlier that they knew they could never get back.

You are exactly right. If you search YouTube for "Box of Rain Grateful Dead Interview", the fellas talk exactly about this!

I find it difficult to believe that they said this "exactly," since Robert Hunter, not Phil Lesh, wrote the lyrics.

Man, yous are messin' it up for me. The first time I heard that Phil Lesh wrote this for his father while he was on his death bed I thought it was absolutely the most powerfully beautiful thing I'd ever heard. I didn't find it sad at all. It makes sense to me. And I love it. Beautiful. So I'm stickin' with that explanation.

co-written by Hunter and Phil. Phil was there seeing the entire thing through I believe.

I don't think this song is sad at all. I actually thought it was more beautiful when I found out this was a song written in a tribute for a dying father.. Such an inspiring song

That same line is what gets me through any tough times!