| Colin Hay – Waiting For My Real Life To Begin Lyrics | 9 years ago |
|
Wow. This one is extremely poignant and resonated within me instantly, like he was talking about my direct experience, I know exactly how he feels. It speaks to the dogged determination to keep up a restless quest, this relentless pursuit of an ever-shifting mirage. It is full of hope, in the worst sense of the word unfortunately - hope that things will be principally different one day and lasting happiness will finally become possible through "getting what I want". This vain hope shifting into despair at being stuck on the hamster wheel of samsara. I gather that this song was written in the concrete context of Colin being dropped from a label? and his aspirations for a successful career in music, and apparently the persuasions of his partner to keep him in the moment and to open up to the possibilities of the present as opposed to chasing ever-elusive popularity and success. And his responses to her are of course comically and tragically dogmatic and self-deprecating, he is definitely making dark fun of his own propensity to destroy any sense of peace by falling again and again into the fruitless chase of happiness through achieving success, including concretely hoping a promising voicemail about "the big break" awaits him. The rolling changes from hope to despair happen within each verse - standing on the bow on the ship of success and yet oh here come the waves of life to beat me down again. Winning illusory victories in his dreams against perceived demons and then finding himself falling right back into the habitual patterns of mind and retracing his steps again, falling into the same pit over and over. Finally the last two lines of the song are deliciously enigmatic. One way to interpret them is to say, when peering into the future of possibilities, straining to lean forward as far as he can, the goal seems almost within reach, in the intense urge of attainment. But another way is to interpret those lines as saying the exact opposite - that on "clear days" when different parts of the psyche are not taking over, when the poet has nearly unobstructed access to his true Self, he can almost just touch that realization that there is and always has been and always will be only this moment and all that he may ever seek is already present. But this is left as a mere hint, a faint whisper of a possibility, an unspoken pointer at attaining the unattainable. |
|
* This information can be up to 15 minutes delayed.