A Ghost You Can’t See
It’s Sunday morning in Louisville Ky. A short walk from the BNB I found Safai Coffee open at 7AM. Southern towns are sleepy on Sunday morning and Louisville is no exception, though Louisville qualifies as a small city. In the South on a Sunday morning, I feel that I ought to be in church. That is the culture.
Church takes many forms for me. This past Friday evening I was present at the Genesee Theater in Waukegan. The restored theater is a magnificent performance space. It’s the equivalent of St. Peters cathedral in Lake County. The interior is soaring, with crystal chandeliers, and the eye falls upon rich deco motif patterns embellishing the walls. And there is not a bad seat in the house; sight lines are superb.
We were present to enjoy a concert by Gordon Lightfoot. Lightfoot is a Canadian folk singer/song writer, whose work produced several hit tunes in the 1970s. He helped define the folk music of the time. I associate his name with Peter, Paul and Mary, with Pete Seeger, and with the great Bob Dylan. The 1960s were a time of awakening for some of us, a gradual dawning of consciousness that being alive needed no justification, that the American government would lie to it’s citizens, and that war was obscenely destructive. At that time in my life, I began to listen to music to hear the voice of God, instead of going to church.
Having said all of that it is clear that I regard Gordon Lightfoot as more than an entertainer. His music celebrates the pathos of human experience. Birth and death are occasions of glory, a revelation of what is most important, and most real. That is hard to miss on the birth of a child. Just ask any parent. The passing of one from this world is another matter. Grief obscures the deeper meaning of the event. Lightfoot illuminates the matter with his great anthem “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” You know the song. It is famous internationally.
Gordon Lightfoot is now 78 years old. He continues to hold forth, his ballads conjuring up connections and possibilities for living, that are almost always obscured by the noise of ordinary life. The noise gets in the way of the music that is always there. The concert experience at the Genesee was unforgettable. I would have paid twice the value of the ticket.
I’ll include a video of one of his great hits, “If You Could Read My Mind.” It’s a treatment of the tragedy inscribed into all relations between us human beings. Misunderstanding, failed expectations, pain (even unintentional) is unavoidable. There is no exception. Each of us is a compilation of our past experiences, and the range of our understanding, our repertoire of emotional response to another is limited. Another person is an enigma, as are we to them. Life at best is a matter of trial and error, of learning from past mistakes, of having the strength to move on. The lyric is profound. I listened and felt tears.
“If You Could Read My Mind”
If you could read my mind, love
What a tale my thoughts could tell
Just like an old-time movie
‘Bout a ghost from a wishin’ well
In a castle dark or a fortress strong
With chains upon my feet
You know that ghost is me
And I will never be set free
As long as I’m a ghost that you can’t seeIf I could read your mind, love
What a tale your thoughts could tell
Just like a paperback novel
The kind the drugstores sell
When you reach the part where the heartaches come
The hero would be me
But heroes often fail
And you won’t read that book again
Because the ending’s just too hard to takeI’d walk away like a movie star
Who gets burned in a three-way script
Enter number two
A movie queen to play the scene
Of bringing all the good things out in me
But for now love, let’s be real
I never thought I could act this way
And I’ve got to say that I just don’t get it
I don’t know where we went wrong
But the feeling’s gone and I just can’t get it backIf you could read my mind, love
What a tale my thoughts could tell
Just like an old-time movie
‘Bout a ghost from a wishin’ well
In a castle dark or a fortress strong
With chains upon my feet
But stories always end
And if you read between the lines
You’ll know that I’m just tryin’ to understand
The feelings that you lack
I never thought I could feel this way
And I’ve got to say that I just don’t get it
I don’t know where we went wrong
But the feeling’s gone and I just can’t get it back
