https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BbfZzox0M-M

There are times when music is similar to a divine visitation, having a god drop by to have coffee with you.  A tune and lyric is moving in a way that you cannot describe.  You are told things that you did not know that you knew.

This song does it for me.  I’ve heard it hundreds of times, as you likely have as well.  A Whiter Shade of Pale was the debut single by the British rock band Procol Harum, released on May 12th 1967.  If you were around in 1967 do you remember where you were, what you did?  I have some memories of that year.  The song’s co-authors Gary Brooker, Keith Reid and Matthew Fisher combine a Bach-derived instrumental melody, soulful vocals, and unusual lyrics.  The song reached number 1 in many of the countries where it was released in 1967.  More than a thousand cover versions of the song by other artists are known.  The version that I have chosen is by Annie Lennox of the Eurythmics.

I cannot tell you what the lyrics mean specifically.  I know that the melody moves me as if I am witness to the creation of a world.

As to the lyrics:  Why waste time with a light fandango?  Open by turning cartwheels across the dance floor!  There is always the crowd, even when one is alone.  The crowd wants more, always more.  Then room spins and then falls away.  You wake up in a small bistro-bar.  You call to the waiter, “another drink, for myself and my companion.”  The companion is none other than the miller in Chaucer’s tale.  And then the miller begins to tell his tale.  The tale was of a ghostly maiden, whose face was a whiter shade of pale.

The maiden speaks:  “At root, at the foundation, there is no reason.  This truth is plain to see.” These words, oracle like, left me as if holding a deck of playing cards looking to see the hand Fortune had dealt me.  I asked her to say more but she would not.  She was one of sixteen vestal virgins, and she must leave for the coast.

Then I awakened wondering what I learned while I was asleep.

The words matter less than the melody.  Your imagination rides upon the melody, on the soaring keyboard runs.

Life and death in a single package.  I told you this was a divine visitation….