This is such a bittersweet song of love and loss of someone painfully close to the 'character' of Emmylou Harris' song.
To me, having had more than my share of tragedy and difficulty in life, I can truly feel her spirit; in a very real way, I 'see' her, her intensity, his pain, because in so many ways it is mine too. At 15 I had an unavoidable, 'radical' frontal lobotomy to excise a 3-in-1 tumor from my brain to save my life. As a result I have no emotions; but hey, I'm lucky to have enough left of 'me' to speak of... I have also studied philosophy. This song has always somehow 'touched/moved' me in ways that no one can understand. Anyway...
First, I would add a pertinent famous quote:
'Some of the greatest battles will be fought within the silent chambers of your own soul' (to some this may be interpreted as mind? Both would be correct.).
Ezra Taft Benson
This song is resoundingly about suicide, and those left behind to pick up the pieces. I know this pain too. I do know this much... anything that causes us to think about thinking, about being, about appreciating what we have, and are... that can only be a good thing for us. Those lucky enough to escape true tragedy, well the true meaning may well fit in their paradigm. However, for those of us that for whatever plan God has for us, and so we live with true hardship, this song has added profundity - added salience. Yes I am a very devout Christian who has faced death no less than 4 times in my as yet still young life!
2 observations about people I have made over the years are that for many, and none of us are entirely immune from this:
We fail to notice that we failed to notice. (My own not yet famous quote)
and
To appreciate life, with all its pain and hardship, is to thank God without saying a word! (also my own)
Just think, for some of us (me too), we have met with the suicide of friends, and are left with the feeling that we didn't see it coming and so we live with the pain of that 'failing to notice...'
To me, this further serves to highlight the multidimensional thinking of Neil Diamond. Whichever way you look at a great deal of his songs, but especially this one [Sweet Old World] we see what we believe/think/feel (I had my emotions surgically removed during the removal of the truly massive brain tumor).
This is such a bittersweet song of love and loss of someone painfully close to the 'character' of Emmylou Harris' song.
To me, having had more than my share of tragedy and difficulty in life, I can truly feel her spirit; in a very real way, I 'see' her, her intensity, his pain, because in so many ways it is mine too. At 15 I had an unavoidable, 'radical' frontal lobotomy to excise a 3-in-1 tumor from my brain to save my life. As a result I have no emotions; but hey, I'm lucky to have enough left of 'me' to speak of... I have also studied philosophy. This song has always somehow 'touched/moved' me in ways that no one can understand. Anyway... First, I would add a pertinent famous quote:
'Some of the greatest battles will be fought within the silent chambers of your own soul' (to some this may be interpreted as mind? Both would be correct.). Ezra Taft Benson
This song is resoundingly about suicide, and those left behind to pick up the pieces. I know this pain too. I do know this much... anything that causes us to think about thinking, about being, about appreciating what we have, and are... that can only be a good thing for us. Those lucky enough to escape true tragedy, well the true meaning may well fit in their paradigm. However, for those of us that for whatever plan God has for us, and so we live with true hardship, this song has added profundity - added salience. Yes I am a very devout Christian who has faced death no less than 4 times in my as yet still young life!
2 observations about people I have made over the years are that for many, and none of us are entirely immune from this:
We fail to notice that we failed to notice. (My own not yet famous quote)
and
To appreciate life, with all its pain and hardship, is to thank God without saying a word! (also my own)
Just think, for some of us (me too), we have met with the suicide of friends, and are left with the feeling that we didn't see it coming and so we live with the pain of that 'failing to notice...' To me, this further serves to highlight the multidimensional thinking of Neil Diamond. Whichever way you look at a great deal of his songs, but especially this one [Sweet Old World] we see what we believe/think/feel (I had my emotions surgically removed during the removal of the truly massive brain tumor).