“Had to Cry Today” evokes a momentous day in which the singer attends a major protest and realizes his relationship is falling apart. The first line, “It’s already written that today will be one to remember” unites past (already written), present (today) and future (to remember). This is not about losing oneself in the moment but about understanding the present as a fleeting episode fated to happen and become part of history. The tumultuous year of 1969 is the context so the references to being outside of the law and the “sign” suggest a protest. What was already written could have been as specific as a real news article predicting important consequences for the protest or as general as a view of history as a predictable path to an inevitable future or as metaphorical as a submission to fate. \n\n“I saw your sign and I missed you there” suggests the singer could see a protest sign made by a romantic interest (the “you”) emerging from the crowd at a distance but not the person holding it. What is the singer crying for? Perhaps the injustice that sparked the protest, such as the people killed in a war, and this pain is intensified or mirrored by estrangement from the person the singer misses. \n\n“You say you can’t reach me” also suggests the packed bodies and immobility of the protest, but also interpersonal distance or failure to communicate. “You want every word to be free,” can be variably interpreted, first, that the “you” will not be pinned down in a relationship, agree to terms of debate or even the meaning of words. In semiotics, a sign is anything that conveys meaning and there is no fixed relationship between a sign, such as a word, and the thing it refers to, and in this sense, every word is free in that there is nothing binding it to a specific thing except the conventions of a particular language. “I saw your sign and I missed you there” suggests such a disconnect between the sign and what it represents and perhaps a larger crisis in which the singer can no longer rely on familiar cues to make meaning of life just as he can no longer rely on the missed friend. The feeling of being outside of the law seems to reinforce both the context of the protest and the feeling of the loss of certainty. \n\nPerhaps the most enigmatic verse is “I’m taking the chance to see the wind in your eyes while I listen.” Wind could be present at an outdoor protest as well as listening to speeches but how does one see wind in another’s eyes? This phrase evokes the winds of change, a relationship in conflict or falling apart and eyes represent both seeing and being seen, of being observed and perhaps judged, and of the wind, like the crowd, and like history or fate itself, as yet another force driving the two inevitably apart.
“Had to Cry Today” evokes a momentous day in which the singer attends a major protest and realizes his relationship is falling apart. The first line, “It’s already written that today will be one to remember” unites past (already written), present (today) and future (to remember). This is not about losing oneself in the moment but about understanding the present as a fleeting episode fated to happen and become part of history. The tumultuous year of 1969 is the context so the references to being outside of the law and the “sign” suggest a protest. What was already written could have been as specific as a real news article predicting important consequences for the protest or as general as a view of history as a predictable path to an inevitable future or as metaphorical as a submission to fate. \n\n“I saw your sign and I missed you there” suggests the singer could see a protest sign made by a romantic interest (the “you”) emerging from the crowd at a distance but not the person holding it. What is the singer crying for? Perhaps the injustice that sparked the protest, such as the people killed in a war, and this pain is intensified or mirrored by estrangement from the person the singer misses. \n\n“You say you can’t reach me” also suggests the packed bodies and immobility of the protest, but also interpersonal distance or failure to communicate. “You want every word to be free,” can be variably interpreted, first, that the “you” will not be pinned down in a relationship, agree to terms of debate or even the meaning of words. In semiotics, a sign is anything that conveys meaning and there is no fixed relationship between a sign, such as a word, and the thing it refers to, and in this sense, every word is free in that there is nothing binding it to a specific thing except the conventions of a particular language. “I saw your sign and I missed you there” suggests such a disconnect between the sign and what it represents and perhaps a larger crisis in which the singer can no longer rely on familiar cues to make meaning of life just as he can no longer rely on the missed friend. The feeling of being outside of the law seems to reinforce both the context of the protest and the feeling of the loss of certainty. \n\nPerhaps the most enigmatic verse is “I’m taking the chance to see the wind in your eyes while I listen.” Wind could be present at an outdoor protest as well as listening to speeches but how does one see wind in another’s eyes? This phrase evokes the winds of change, a relationship in conflict or falling apart and eyes represent both seeing and being seen, of being observed and perhaps judged, and of the wind, like the crowd, and like history or fate itself, as yet another force driving the two inevitably apart.