White tongues are gravestones. The inscriptions are so pervasively - and in this case, hollowly - full of an unquestioning faith.
"Papa died sunday, and I... understood. All dead white boys say... God is good." But Beam doesn't give us a perspective on a speaker that has much choice or freedom to think any other way; there is something in the tone that is, if not ominous, as already suggested, deeply, deeply resigned.
That's the best word I can put to it: resigned. But there is a deeper beauty at work here, I would argue (as with most of Beam's work): "Papa died while my / Girl, lady Edith was born. / Both 'heads' felt like / Eyes on the crack in the door."
This is, I think, a song about the circularity of existence - the coming and going, and the speaker being somehow caught in a place where he can't fight it, but still cannot help but wonder at the power of it. The pathos in certain lines - "Papa died smiling / Wide as the ring of a bell" and "Slept through Christmas / Slept on an acre of bones" - Reflects both an intense recognition of and resignation toward the events that he (the speaker) is forced to negotiate. It's a combination of awe and awfulness, a collision of the secular and sacred, that is the focus of this speaker's experience - and there is a sort of helplessness AND hopefullness bound up in his recognition of this.
It's a celebration - of both life and death. I think the rest of the album carries this theme as well. It carried me through hurricane Ivan, and the loss of my home. Something about it is able to embrace the... wholeness... of so many apparently differentiated things. And I think this song is the best point of that whole album.
"White tongues hang out... God is good."
White tongues are gravestones. The inscriptions are so pervasively - and in this case, hollowly - full of an unquestioning faith.
"Papa died sunday, and I... understood. All dead white boys say... God is good." But Beam doesn't give us a perspective on a speaker that has much choice or freedom to think any other way; there is something in the tone that is, if not ominous, as already suggested, deeply, deeply resigned.
That's the best word I can put to it: resigned. But there is a deeper beauty at work here, I would argue (as with most of Beam's work): "Papa died while my / Girl, lady Edith was born. / Both 'heads' felt like / Eyes on the crack in the door."
This is, I think, a song about the circularity of existence - the coming and going, and the speaker being somehow caught in a place where he can't fight it, but still cannot help but wonder at the power of it. The pathos in certain lines - "Papa died smiling / Wide as the ring of a bell" and "Slept through Christmas / Slept on an acre of bones" - Reflects both an intense recognition of and resignation toward the events that he (the speaker) is forced to negotiate. It's a combination of awe and awfulness, a collision of the secular and sacred, that is the focus of this speaker's experience - and there is a sort of helplessness AND hopefullness bound up in his recognition of this.
It's a celebration - of both life and death. I think the rest of the album carries this theme as well. It carried me through hurricane Ivan, and the loss of my home. Something about it is able to embrace the... wholeness... of so many apparently differentiated things. And I think this song is the best point of that whole album.
@broken-hallelujah beautifully put. Thank you
@broken-hallelujah beautifully put. Thank you