Sill describes love like mist and light. Love can sometimes exist almost tangible between two people like the wet air softly hovering between sky and ground. Like mist there is the risk of love fading out or drifting away. Love can also feel like being gently wakened by sunlight, that warms and perhaps reveal something that has been hidden or forgotten.
As is often the case with Sill's songs this one has many associations to formulations and ideas in the Bible. The song begins with a reference to the beginning of the Bible and indeed the biblical version of the very beginning of the world. In Genesis 1:2 the “spirit” of God is moving over the face of a dark water, but as many may know the Hebrew word “ruach” actually means wind or breath. Later on (in 2:5) God breaths life into the first human being. In the New Testament Jesus breaths on his disciples saying “Receive the Holy Spirit" (John 20:21-22). The “crystal choir” Sill mentions from her dream is reminiscent of the passage of Revelations 4-5 in the Bible where a group of strange heavenly creatures worship the “Lamb who was slain”, lighting incense on “a sea of glass, clear as crystal” and singing “a new song”.
Sill's song is sad, describing the longing for something that cannot be. After mentioning the dream of “breathing like one” in perfect union beyond death Sill goes on asking the shimmering memory of a crying dying star to show her how to fly. Thus reminding me of T.S. Eliot's “This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper” (The Waste Land). A kiss can be like a falling star, exploding in a moment of radiant splendour. While actually short as a sigh a kiss sometimes evokes spectacular feelings and anticipations of eternal bliss.
I think the song is summoned up in the passage “promise me this and only this”: while taking love for what it is Sill understands that much of the indispensable joy of love can be reached only by being somewhat unrealistic and childish.
Sill describes love like mist and light. Love can sometimes exist almost tangible between two people like the wet air softly hovering between sky and ground. Like mist there is the risk of love fading out or drifting away. Love can also feel like being gently wakened by sunlight, that warms and perhaps reveal something that has been hidden or forgotten.
As is often the case with Sill's songs this one has many associations to formulations and ideas in the Bible. The song begins with a reference to the beginning of the Bible and indeed the biblical version of the very beginning of the world. In Genesis 1:2 the “spirit” of God is moving over the face of a dark water, but as many may know the Hebrew word “ruach” actually means wind or breath. Later on (in 2:5) God breaths life into the first human being. In the New Testament Jesus breaths on his disciples saying “Receive the Holy Spirit" (John 20:21-22). The “crystal choir” Sill mentions from her dream is reminiscent of the passage of Revelations 4-5 in the Bible where a group of strange heavenly creatures worship the “Lamb who was slain”, lighting incense on “a sea of glass, clear as crystal” and singing “a new song”.
Sill's song is sad, describing the longing for something that cannot be. After mentioning the dream of “breathing like one” in perfect union beyond death Sill goes on asking the shimmering memory of a crying dying star to show her how to fly. Thus reminding me of T.S. Eliot's “This is the way the world ends, not with a bang but with a whimper” (The Waste Land). A kiss can be like a falling star, exploding in a moment of radiant splendour. While actually short as a sigh a kiss sometimes evokes spectacular feelings and anticipations of eternal bliss.
I think the song is summoned up in the passage “promise me this and only this”: while taking love for what it is Sill understands that much of the indispensable joy of love can be reached only by being somewhat unrealistic and childish.