I like this song.  But why?  How is it that I am moved? What speaks to me as a bedrock-truth from these lyrics, from this melody?  Perhaps its the possibility of coming to an unshakable decision, an enduring course-of-action that will not be qualified, modified, or conditions added.

Deep River Woman written by Lionel Richie, released in 1986 with Alabama, asserts that life’s ebb and flow, conflict, ambition, self-pity, self-deception notwithstanding, — it is possible to love someone without reserve, all-in, with a tenacity that comes from at last recognizing what one wants.

What do you think?

Some lines by Nietzsche which I read this morning are included following the YouTube rendition.  These lines are also about an unyielding, fierce commitment; a courage that masters everything else that is in flux, that establishes a horizon. 

This is no mere love song; but a statement that “the truth” as a program for moving ahead with life, demands full weight of commitment.  We chose to be done with the cynicism of a dilettante, –and take our stand.  Or not.

….like eagles fixed,
long looking down the precipice,
down their precipice:——
Oh, how they whirl down now,
thereunder, therein,
to ever deeper profoundness whirling!—
Then,
sudden,
with aim aright,
with quivering flight,
on lambkins pouncing,
headlong down, sore-hungry,
for lambkins longing,
fierce ‘gainst all lamb-spirits,
furious-fierce all that look
sheeplike, or lambeyed, or crisp-woolly,
—grey, with lambsheep kindliness!

Thus,
eaglelike, pantherlike,
are the poet’s desires,
are your own desires ‘neath a thousand guises.

You fool! You poet!
You who overviews all mankind—
As if a God,… contemplating sheep-:
The God to rend within mankind,
as the sheep in mankind,
and in rending laughing—
That, that is your own blessedness!
Of a panther and eagle—blessedness!

Of a poet and fool—blessedness!——

–excerpt Thus Spake Zarathustra by Friedrich Nietzsche,  no. 74 The Song of Melancholy