Speaking from personal experience, as someone who is having to watch his loved one 'slip away downstream', I think this is one of the best ever songs about death. My wife is so close; her bright eyes, normally so full of life and love, normally glowing with vitality and enjoyment, are now hollow, grey and vacant.
I have watched, heartbroken, as she has declined gradually over the last 6 months. Her determination has waned, depression has set in and I know that one day soon her bright eyes will burn no longer.
When does it start? Maybe death creeps up on us, ever so gradually, every time we fear it so much that it takes away from our appreciation of life.
When I look at the sadness in my wife's eyes, and no doubt in my own eyes watching her, I see fear - surely far more fear of what may or may not happen when she 'floats out on the tide' than what she will ever feel when it actually does happen.
Death is a return to peace and we all know it, but it's not really the fear of death that we are afraid of; it's the attachment to life. It's so hard to let go, especially when most of us spend our whole lives in a mental struggle for survival, always trying to build more security...like we can ever hope to cheat death and live forever! The harder we try to survive and improve our lives, the more we underline and reaffirm our own subconscious fear of death, which in the end always catches up with us on our death beds.
If you want my advice, spend as much time as you can contemplating your own death (like the Tibetan Buddhists do). It's not morbid, it's liberating; only the soul that is at one with death can truly appreciate life without being held back by fear.
This song is one of the best ways of beginning that journey. If you listen to it and feel a tightness in your chest, like a star inside trying to burn its way out of you...if you weep with sadness at the absurdity and unfairness of life and the futility of it all...if this song moves you to the very core of your being and you yearn to release your passion, yet at the same time you can't stop yourself pressing the repeat button and playing it over and over again... If you have ever loved somebody more than you even love yourself, and more than life itself... ??? If that is you, take a deep breath my friend. You are the type who will feel your loved one all around you, within and without you, for the rest of your life. Ever present. In the morning mist and the cool evening breeze, in the winter frost and the autumn leaves.
What happens when we die? Where do we go? We go NOWHERE - NOW + HERE - turning and returning to the passive energy of BEING, the background presence that infuses life with its passion - our passion. And if you are the kind of person that is sensitive to that then you are fortunate that you are able to release some of those feelings now, while you are still alive and conscious.
Thank you Watership Down. Thank you Mike Batt and Art Garfunkel. And thank YOU for allowing their expressions to reflect within the mirror of your own soul and in so doing allow life and death to become a little more conscious of each other.
xxx
What a beautiful answer. I too am losing a loved one, and this songs means so much more to me than it even did when I first heard it. I always believed it was about death; now I know how true it is.
What a beautiful answer. I too am losing a loved one, and this songs means so much more to me than it even did when I first heard it. I always believed it was about death; now I know how true it is.
Life is a dear present that no one of us is entitled to. Enjoy it while it lasts, and don't think it 'unfair' when the present turns out to be different than you thought it would be. Use your experience to enrich yourself, and then enrich a few others.
Life is a dear present that no one of us is entitled to. Enjoy it while it lasts, and don't think it 'unfair' when the present turns out to be different than you thought it would be. Use your experience to enrich yourself, and then enrich a few others.
Dear Joss, your beautiful words did not go unnoticed. Thank you for caring for fellow humans in similar conditions such as you are, or were. I hope you are well and that your own words have given courage to you as they have to me, and probably some more. Cheers from Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
@jossgardner Hello Joss, how are you?
I hope you'll ever read this message, and if not - at least someone else will do it.
@jossgardner Hello Joss, how are you?
I hope you'll ever read this message, and if not - at least someone else will do it.
I just wanted to say thank you for your warn and heartbreaking words. Your comment gave me inspiration and hope even brave to face my day to day struggles.
I hope you are doing well, trying to live you life at the best way.
I just wanted to say thank you for your warn and heartbreaking words. Your comment gave me inspiration and hope even brave to face my day to day struggles.
I hope you are doing well, trying to live you life at the best way.
@jossgardner I find your interpretation today, 6 years later, as I sit beside my little girls grave..I danced her to sleep when she was little, to this song, and it was the first song to explode in my head after she passed...every word you wrote reaches every piece of me..I would say it is beautiful, but there is nothing beautiful in the death of my baby girl or in the death of your wife..I just wonder how you are doing now..I wonder how you got through it because I know all to well we never get over it......
@jossgardner I find your interpretation today, 6 years later, as I sit beside my little girls grave..I danced her to sleep when she was little, to this song, and it was the first song to explode in my head after she passed...every word you wrote reaches every piece of me..I would say it is beautiful, but there is nothing beautiful in the death of my baby girl or in the death of your wife..I just wonder how you are doing now..I wonder how you got through it because I know all to well we never get over it...
I'm very sorry to hear of the death of your daughter.
I'm very sorry to hear of the death of your daughter.
I don't think anyone can really help another that much to get over something like that. Looking back at my own grieving process, it almost seems like something I had to go through... and that maybe some people are required, for some reason, to have to go through that. It's not something I could have understood at the time it was happening to me, nor do I really understand it now to be honest, but there's a sense of inevitability about it; I needed to learn to let go.
And when I did, beauty returned to my life with more abundance and intensity than ever. These days I see her bright eyes glowing in the faces of others around me. I hear her laughter and feel her joy in that of others. Her warmth and radiance - the radiance that I always associated with her - is still very much there, everywhere I happen to see it; it's just not tied to her form anymore. And when I let go of thinking that it could only come from her, suddenly I saw that same spirit - "her" spirit - very much alive and kicking.
I even see it in myself. Sometimes I find myself bubbling and giggling the way she did... Sometimes I find myself saying the things that she would've said... I feel that spirit becoming me. Merging and emerging from and with me...
Could it be more ironic? That which we are able to let go of, stays with us forever. Not just with us... it becomes us. We ARE It. We are One.
But this One-derful 'Oneness' is not a physical thing. It's a spirit. We are one with the Energy, not with the material form... and it is THAT that we must recognise and honour in order to unite with it.
The energy that IS (is, not was) your daughter is right here, right now.
The energy is moving. It is dancing.
It is unspeakably light and joyful.
The exact same vibration is present as you read this - the same wavelength. But you may not feel that presence unless your own emotions are vibrating on the same frequency. Energetic resonance. How can you ever unite with a happy living vibration if you are still sad that she's died?
I realise I'm in danger of making this sound easy, when in truth it has been a slow process of working through the deep sadness that needed to be set free. It isn't easy. Unimaginable pain, that no-one else around you can ever feel or understand, has to be consciously experienced in order that the energy is transmuted. It has to be made conscious, Tapanga. You must meditate through this - every tear...every sigh... every squeeze and stretch of the broken heart - you must meditate on it all.
Do not escape into distractions --that is when people fail to get over their traumas. They failed because they tried to run away... but one can't. The energy is inside you. It needs to be set free. SHE needs to be set free from the energetic bonds that confine her. It is the final act of Love... and the greatest blessing we can ever give our loved ones... to open the bird cage and let her fly onwards on her journey.
Speaking from personal experience, as someone who is having to watch his loved one 'slip away downstream', I think this is one of the best ever songs about death. My wife is so close; her bright eyes, normally so full of life and love, normally glowing with vitality and enjoyment, are now hollow, grey and vacant. I have watched, heartbroken, as she has declined gradually over the last 6 months. Her determination has waned, depression has set in and I know that one day soon her bright eyes will burn no longer. When does it start? Maybe death creeps up on us, ever so gradually, every time we fear it so much that it takes away from our appreciation of life. When I look at the sadness in my wife's eyes, and no doubt in my own eyes watching her, I see fear - surely far more fear of what may or may not happen when she 'floats out on the tide' than what she will ever feel when it actually does happen. Death is a return to peace and we all know it, but it's not really the fear of death that we are afraid of; it's the attachment to life. It's so hard to let go, especially when most of us spend our whole lives in a mental struggle for survival, always trying to build more security...like we can ever hope to cheat death and live forever! The harder we try to survive and improve our lives, the more we underline and reaffirm our own subconscious fear of death, which in the end always catches up with us on our death beds. If you want my advice, spend as much time as you can contemplating your own death (like the Tibetan Buddhists do). It's not morbid, it's liberating; only the soul that is at one with death can truly appreciate life without being held back by fear. This song is one of the best ways of beginning that journey. If you listen to it and feel a tightness in your chest, like a star inside trying to burn its way out of you...if you weep with sadness at the absurdity and unfairness of life and the futility of it all...if this song moves you to the very core of your being and you yearn to release your passion, yet at the same time you can't stop yourself pressing the repeat button and playing it over and over again... If you have ever loved somebody more than you even love yourself, and more than life itself... ??? If that is you, take a deep breath my friend. You are the type who will feel your loved one all around you, within and without you, for the rest of your life. Ever present. In the morning mist and the cool evening breeze, in the winter frost and the autumn leaves. What happens when we die? Where do we go? We go NOWHERE - NOW + HERE - turning and returning to the passive energy of BEING, the background presence that infuses life with its passion - our passion. And if you are the kind of person that is sensitive to that then you are fortunate that you are able to release some of those feelings now, while you are still alive and conscious. Thank you Watership Down. Thank you Mike Batt and Art Garfunkel. And thank YOU for allowing their expressions to reflect within the mirror of your own soul and in so doing allow life and death to become a little more conscious of each other. xxx
What a beautiful answer. I too am losing a loved one, and this songs means so much more to me than it even did when I first heard it. I always believed it was about death; now I know how true it is.
What a beautiful answer. I too am losing a loved one, and this songs means so much more to me than it even did when I first heard it. I always believed it was about death; now I know how true it is.
Life is a dear present that no one of us is entitled to. Enjoy it while it lasts, and don't think it 'unfair' when the present turns out to be different than you thought it would be. Use your experience to enrich yourself, and then enrich a few others.
Life is a dear present that no one of us is entitled to. Enjoy it while it lasts, and don't think it 'unfair' when the present turns out to be different than you thought it would be. Use your experience to enrich yourself, and then enrich a few others.
Dear Joss, your beautiful words did not go unnoticed. Thank you for caring for fellow humans in similar conditions such as you are, or were. I hope you are well and that your own words have given courage to you as they have to me, and probably some more. Cheers from Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
@jossgardner Hello Joss, how are you? I hope you'll ever read this message, and if not - at least someone else will do it.
@jossgardner Hello Joss, how are you? I hope you'll ever read this message, and if not - at least someone else will do it.
I just wanted to say thank you for your warn and heartbreaking words. Your comment gave me inspiration and hope even brave to face my day to day struggles. I hope you are doing well, trying to live you life at the best way.
I just wanted to say thank you for your warn and heartbreaking words. Your comment gave me inspiration and hope even brave to face my day to day struggles. I hope you are doing well, trying to live you life at the best way.
Thank you my friend, Greetings from Israel
Thank you my friend, Greetings from Israel
@jossgardner I find your interpretation today, 6 years later, as I sit beside my little girls grave..I danced her to sleep when she was little, to this song, and it was the first song to explode in my head after she passed...every word you wrote reaches every piece of me..I would say it is beautiful, but there is nothing beautiful in the death of my baby girl or in the death of your wife..I just wonder how you are doing now..I wonder how you got through it because I know all to well we never get over it......
@jossgardner I find your interpretation today, 6 years later, as I sit beside my little girls grave..I danced her to sleep when she was little, to this song, and it was the first song to explode in my head after she passed...every word you wrote reaches every piece of me..I would say it is beautiful, but there is nothing beautiful in the death of my baby girl or in the death of your wife..I just wonder how you are doing now..I wonder how you got through it because I know all to well we never get over it...
Tapanga,
Tapanga,
I'm very sorry to hear of the death of your daughter.
I'm very sorry to hear of the death of your daughter.
I don't think anyone can really help another that much to get over something like that. Looking back at my own grieving process, it almost seems like something I had to go through... and that maybe some people are required, for some reason, to have to go through that. It's not something I could have understood at the time it was happening to me, nor do I really understand it now to be honest, but there's a sense of inevitability about it; I needed to learn to let go.
And when I did, beauty returned to my life with more abundance and intensity than ever. These days I see her bright eyes glowing in the faces of others around me. I hear her laughter and feel her joy in that of others. Her warmth and radiance - the radiance that I always associated with her - is still very much there, everywhere I happen to see it; it's just not tied to her form anymore. And when I let go of thinking that it could only come from her, suddenly I saw that same spirit - "her" spirit - very much alive and kicking.
I even see it in myself. Sometimes I find myself bubbling and giggling the way she did... Sometimes I find myself saying the things that she would've said... I feel that spirit becoming me. Merging and emerging from and with me...
Could it be more ironic? That which we are able to let go of, stays with us forever. Not just with us... it becomes us. We ARE It. We are One.
But this One-derful 'Oneness' is not a physical thing. It's a spirit. We are one with the Energy, not with the material form... and it is THAT that we must recognise and honour in order to unite with it.
The energy that IS (is, not was) your daughter is right here, right now. The energy is moving. It is dancing. It is unspeakably light and joyful.
The exact same vibration is present as you read this - the same wavelength. But you may not feel that presence unless your own emotions are vibrating on the same frequency. Energetic resonance. How can you ever unite with a happy living vibration if you are still sad that she's died?
I realise I'm in danger of making this sound easy, when in truth it has been a slow process of working through the deep sadness that needed to be set free. It isn't easy. Unimaginable pain, that no-one else around you can ever feel or understand, has to be consciously experienced in order that the energy is transmuted. It has to be made conscious, Tapanga. You must meditate through this - every tear...every sigh... every squeeze and stretch of the broken heart - you must meditate on it all.
Do not escape into distractions --that is when people fail to get over their traumas. They failed because they tried to run away... but one can't. The energy is inside you. It needs to be set free. SHE needs to be set free from the energetic bonds that confine her. It is the final act of Love... and the greatest blessing we can ever give our loved ones... to open the bird cage and let her fly onwards on her journey.
xoxoxo jossgardner@hotmail.com
"Life flows on within you and without you"
Wow.
Wow.