If you love music, you already know that when you feel down, a sad song is just the medicine, the relief that you need.  This one by the Eagles, brings back memories.  The more miles that one has under one’s belt, the more clear the truth conveyed by the lyric.

Old Heraclitus came to mind.  Heraclitus of Ephesus was a pre-Socratic philosopher.  Beginnings are unspeakably important, portending the entire trajectory of a life, or of a people.  Heraclitus surviving fragments are a meditation upon change.  Philosophy as an academic discipline has been a exploration of successive generation’s thinking about change.  As a personal discipline, philosophy has been a life-long meditation about my experience of change from the mid 20th century into the early 21st century.  “Panta Rhei,” everything changes, said Heraclitus. A more certain, concise poetic truth about reality has never since been uttered.

This song by the Eagles brought to mind the hours that I spent in a long gone coffee shop in Tokyo.  It was called the Moon-Gate Coffee Shop, or Fugetsudo in Japanese.  You just had to mention the name and any Japanese college student would know the place in Shinjuku.  It was a hang out for students, for would-be students still trying to pass the tough college entrance exam, and for ex-pats like myself living in Tokyo.  It was a place for meeting interesting people, people willing to entertain radical ideas, during the time of the Vietnam War.  A life-sized, black sculpture of a female nude on a pedestal dominated the floor of the seating area.  The place was not especially clean, the coffee was terrible and expensive, and I loved the hours spent there studying, practicing Japanese and soaking up the atmosphere.  It was a holy place.

The tune says it better than I. I like the semi-religious references, “…and wonder at the powers that be.”  The haunting song illuminates the incandescence of life.

The Sad Cafe

Out in the shiny night, the rain
was softly falling
The tracks that ran down the boulevard had
all been washed away

Out of the silver light, the past came softly calling
And I remember the times we spent
inside the Sad Cafe

Oh, it seemed like a holy place,
protected by amazing grace
And we would sing right out loud, the
things we could not say
We thought we could change this world
with words like “love” and “freedom”
We were part of the lonely crowd
Inside the Sad Cafe

Oh, expecting to fly,
we would meet on that beautiful shore in the sweet by and by

Some of their dreams came true,
some just passed away
And some of them stayed behind
inside the Sad Cafe.

The clouds rolled in and hid that shore
Now that Glory Train, it don’t stop here no more
Now I look at the years gone by,
and wonder at the powers that be.
I don’t know why fortune smiles on some
and let’s the rest go free

Maybe the time has drawn the faces I recall
But things in this life change very slowly,
if they ever change at all
no use in asking why,
it just turned out that way
So meet me at midnight baby
inside the Sad Cafe.
Why don’t you meet me at midnight, babe,
inside the Sad Cafe.

Songwriters: Glenn Frey / Don Henley / John David Souther

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