VEGANGELICA

Hi, Stone Birds,
I like the strong visual images of nature that you include in this song, which I interpret as describing the road of life we all take and the difficulties/sadness faced while traveling it. For example, you start with a startling yet appealing image: "There's a river by my bed." This beautiful impossibility...unless you happen to be in a tent outside! ...catches my attention right at the beginning of the song. Then, you explain that you have lost this joy and appreciation you once had in living. The loss of this joy seems much more real since you first describe what the joy feels like (using the river/sun). If you had simply described the loss of joy first (without describing the beauty of what was lost), then the loss would seem less painful.

I also am touched by the image you create when you write, "Sleep with petals in the cradle." I feel this line succinctly shows the tenderness we have toward our children, or the children we once were, and, when combined with the following line, "And watch the sun go down," describes how quickly life passes (in my interpretation). Life is so fleeting that it can be summarized in two short lines:

The fact that the passage of life is described in two lines physically represents life's speed (again, this is just how I am interpreting the lyrics). And, once again, both lines include a reference to nature (a repeated theme in the poem).

When you write that everyone has walked the road before you, finding a splotch of color, or aspects of life that are profoundly beautiful and meaningful, those lines acknowledge the human condition: many others have enjoyed life, finding beauty in it as much as you do or can now. This section of the song, as I see it, widens the focus of the poem outward away from the speaker toward other people, emphasizing the connection you have to them, and probably sympathy for them, because they also lived...and then died, too, as we must all.

I like the shift of focus away from self (not that self isn't important) to others (in addition to self), because I think feeling that connection to other people often helps people heal from hurts inflicted by life. For example, I find it comforting to know others have walked life's road as we do now. Since I know your songs, from what you have said, often revolve around healing, I felt that this portion of this particular song was important because I see it as part of the healing effort: by acknowledging the loss (of life or of joy) this is a way to accept/heal and continue on that hard, grey road.

The song also makes me sorry/sad that life (for the speaker of the poem...and I am assuming you are also the speaker of the poem, describing self-experiences rather than experiences of someone else) sometimes feels like a heartless and long, grey, road.

One segment of the song that is not clear to me is the following:
I am wondering if the word "than" was intended to be "then," since "than" would be used in a comparison? Or is the "than" supposed to be "that," as in "I know that you know that we don't know?" Or, am I simply not understanding the meaning? I also am curious what it is that is not known.

To summarize, the many visual images you use carry me through the song from beginning to end, with the repetition of "petals in the cradle" creating a somber feeling of loss, of the ephemeral, that I feel suits the topic (as I understand it) very well. The repetition of the two lines, "Sleep with petals in the cradle and watch the sun go down" throughout the poem could be interpreted as showing that person after person after person has experienced this brief life and then death. The repetition of these two lines makes me feel as if the song encompasses the lives of many individual people within it.
--Erica