This song is folk tale in mid-telling, magical and mystical, the scenes of the story folded one on top of another.
The villagers have imprisoned a wild-eyed boy from the mountain. He appears to them as other, outsider, stranger. And he is strange, though not crazy. He brings a message of peace with nature, which the villagers, being wrapped up in their own lives, cannot understand. He cannot explain to them, what they will not understand, and so he patiently waits. They write him off, thinking him insane, a dog, a distraction, and a nuisance.
The villagers go to sleep, solemn, having passed judgement. They turn him over to the hangman, usher of passage between life and death, who filling his room with smoke, shows as he falls asleep that a transformation is coming. The boy lies awake, his ordeal upon him.
The boy now breaks the night, waking the village from slumber, with his call, a desperate plea to get them to understand: We have touched one another. You must accept me as I am, wild and free, for this is the real me. It's really me! It's really you and really me! If you cannot accept me as I am, you will lose me! (friend, lover, family)
And with that cry the spirit of the mountain, Freecloud, wakes up and turns upon the village. The rope, symbol of binding people together as well as of separating body from spirit, rises up proclaiming the unjust sentence against the boy. The mountain moved by this injustice brings catastrophe down on the villagers. An avalanche of boulders crushes and destroys the village. The boy begs the mountain to stop the onslaught. The villagers wouldn't kill me, he says. But, it is too late.
The message in the boy's eyes was of peace and love, not a love of accommodation and compromise, but one of fierce independence. He was misunderstood by the villagers, who couldn't accept that he could be completely free, and also by the mountain, which couldn't accept injustice against one of it's own. And at that the beautiful prophet can only weep.
This song is folk tale in mid-telling, magical and mystical, the scenes of the story folded one on top of another.
The villagers have imprisoned a wild-eyed boy from the mountain. He appears to them as other, outsider, stranger. And he is strange, though not crazy. He brings a message of peace with nature, which the villagers, being wrapped up in their own lives, cannot understand. He cannot explain to them, what they will not understand, and so he patiently waits. They write him off, thinking him insane, a dog, a distraction, and a nuisance.
The villagers go to sleep, solemn, having passed judgement. They turn him over to the hangman, usher of passage between life and death, who filling his room with smoke, shows as he falls asleep that a transformation is coming. The boy lies awake, his ordeal upon him.
The boy now breaks the night, waking the village from slumber, with his call, a desperate plea to get them to understand: We have touched one another. You must accept me as I am, wild and free, for this is the real me. It's really me! It's really you and really me! If you cannot accept me as I am, you will lose me! (friend, lover, family)
And with that cry the spirit of the mountain, Freecloud, wakes up and turns upon the village. The rope, symbol of binding people together as well as of separating body from spirit, rises up proclaiming the unjust sentence against the boy. The mountain moved by this injustice brings catastrophe down on the villagers. An avalanche of boulders crushes and destroys the village. The boy begs the mountain to stop the onslaught. The villagers wouldn't kill me, he says. But, it is too late.
The message in the boy's eyes was of peace and love, not a love of accommodation and compromise, but one of fierce independence. He was misunderstood by the villagers, who couldn't accept that he could be completely free, and also by the mountain, which couldn't accept injustice against one of it's own. And at that the beautiful prophet can only weep.
@ocrow This is pretty much what I understood of the song back in about 1974 when I explored back from Ziggy Stardust which I had just heard.
@ocrow This is pretty much what I understood of the song back in about 1974 when I explored back from Ziggy Stardust which I had just heard.