Everyday Encounter...
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One line in this one has stuck with me more than anything else. How can you love someone And not yourself? My understanding is that you can't. The golden rule in so many walks of life is a variation on "Love Thy Neighbour", which gets more focus than "As you love yourself." If you don't know how to love you well, I'm not sure I want you to love me in the same way. Or if you think you can love me as your neighbour, I want you to be able to love yourself in the same way.
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Ever have one of those moments where you start listening to a song and you kind of recognise the voice but it just doesn't quite fit with the music you're hearing?
My friend Sarah introduced me to the Arctic Monkeys way back when she got their first album "Whatever People Say I Am, That's What I'm Not" before they properly made it big. And then I kept up with them into the second album, but after that they drifted off my radar. Coming back into listening in 2022 with "The Car" I realised I'd missed a lot. There was a whole musical journey that had gone on in the four albums in between! The voice was the same, but the rest of it left me thinking that I ain't quite where I think I am! Doddie Weir was retiring from Rugby when I started paying an interest in it. He's been more on my radar since he retired and since his MND diagnosis than he was before.
The tune of "Doddie's Dream" apparently was written without him in mind, but thinking about hope in 2020, and that we all needed a little hope. Doddie was someone who was bringing people hope through his charity and so it was later given his name. "You're always trying to see yourself through the eyes of someone else" There's a degree of pressure on us when we do that.
To “hold a mirror up to" is a phrase meaning “to take a look at oneself objectively to examine or reflect on things (issues) stemming from the reality of reflection; to reveal to someone about the way they look (differently) to the rest of the world (so that they can reflect upon themselves); expose, show up, bring to light (some (unpleasant) aspects to oneself)”. Community done badly holds up images of the ideal alongside the mirror and tells us all the ways we don't measure up. Sometimes songs just get an "AMEN!" This is one of those. And I think it speaks for itself as a song... I'm not sure what I can add! Anyone else feel it? They say that ignorance is bliss.
Sometimes we'd rather close our eyes and have everything go away. Perhaps if we sleep things will be better when we wake. Someone will have magically fixed the problem. I guess this song just draws together the thoughts that I've already had with "Bridge over troubled water" and "Eyes of a child". Human kind has been on a journey round light:
We sat round a fire and told stories as communities and clans; We moved indoors and read stories around the fireplace, or listened to them on the radio; The radio got replaced by the television and we continued to have less responsibility in telling the story, though we were all still pointing in the same direction; Nowadays the TV is still in the corner of the living room, and the seats still point towards it, and it ever continues to burn out a light and tell stories, but whilst it tells its stories I tune it out and disappear into the light of the screen in my hand. It tells stories, paints pictures and shows things to me. I experience them alone, along with millions of other people, and occasionally I send them to other people on social media so that they too can enjoy them alone. |
Every-Day EncounterIf you'd rather listen and come to your own conclusions about the eclectic mix of songs I worked through in Lent 2023, here's the Spotify Playlist! Archives
September 2023
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