Dead Songs in Depth

    
Indeed! Welcome.

"Death" = "End of the Road"?

Let's talk about that by the riverside, if you care.

Fwiw, I have no position on this proposition.Just something to chat
about.
  

    
Hey Marked,
You bring up a good point,
"It must have been"
a subcouncious thing to relate the "dead" to death.

Fareyou well!

No doubt, there's  the positive and the negative.
If I start with one and double it, it goes to infinity,
If I start with one and divide it by half,it goes to infinity,
I guess the only difference is,one gets big and one gets small.

Listen to the river sing sweet songs , to rock ,you're soul.
Going home

Does perspective enter in the world of infinity?

P.s.
I'm totally uneducated and terrible with a keyboard.
Could spellcheck be made to show me the correct spellings, instead of
just telling the words that are spelled wrong?

Ha ,I just checked this message and it says I spelled spellcheck
wrong:-)
  

    
Heh!   ain't technology a bitch...


"There is a road, no simple highway,
Between the dawn and the dark of night;
And if you go, no one may follow -- 
That path is for your steps alone."

I never saw this as having anything to do with Death.  I saw it 
as speaking of a long, complex, maybe-dangerous highway leading 
from "dark of night" TO "the dawn" -- classic metaphors of the
'spiritual journey' from ignorant delusion to enlightenment.
In prose, it'd be "There is a road (which is not a easy sort of
highway to take), that runs from the dark of night to the dawn".

But it's done as poetry, so the construction there.  Although the
poet says "between... and" them and NOT "leading from one to the
other" (made even more ambiguous by putting dawn first & dark 2nd),
and that gives the implication that its possible to travel on this
road BOTH ways -- one can also 'spiritually journey' from Dawn back
to Dark of night, from enlightenment back to ignorant delusion.
[throw in snarky comment here about American politics Carter--> Bush]

We don't usually think about spirituality that way -- or at least
don't sing about it! -- but Buddhist monks & etc all thru the 
ages have worried about that possibility, taking the road in that
'backwards' direction.  I'm sure that Hunter 1970, having watched
the Hippie scene implode & degenerate & be co-opted & sold-out, 
having watched many formerly-bright spirits become meth-burnouts
or religious fanatics or political-terrorists or whatever, had this
somewhere on his mind.  But whether he *intended* that ambiguous
suggestion when writing about the 'spiritual journey', or if it
just appeared there in the Dylanesque way, only he knows...


"And if you go, no one may follow -- 
That path is for your steps alone."

I take that as just the simple common obsevation of many about
the existential loneliness of the 'spiritual journey' -- you have
to do it within yourself, others can support but cannot really
accompany -- "you're on yer own, on THAT highway!"
  

    
Ahh!
But death would make a ripple?
I shudder to think about it!
  

    
Welcome, Bill! Great conversation. I always did think of those lines as
having to do with birth to death. Nice to see it open up!
  

    
Birth -> Death
Delusion -> Clarity
Clarity -> Delusion

The beauty of poetry is that it can sustain multiple interpretations,
allowing the reader to make it his or her own.  Ambiguity allows for
interpretation.  That's one of the things that I like about the
Grateful Dead's lyrics:  What the fuck did that mean?  I dunno, what
did it mean to YOU?  It means different things to different people, and
no one meaning is the RIGHT one.  It can resonate with many in
different ways, and open avenues to understanding.

Oh, yes:  Welcome to the Well.  Feel free to join other conferences,
but be prepared to wear some asbestos in a few here and there.  Ignore
the trolls.
  

    
heh. but in the meantime, and you may know this already, there are a few
dead-centric places: <gd.> <tours.> <deadlit.> to name a few...
  

    

> and no one meaning is the RIGHT one.

Well, except that MINE always is...
  

    
Thanks for the welcome everyone!
I must admit that last week the Absinthe was kicking in and I was a
little loose lipped.
But my thoughts on that line remain the same.
I know everyone has a different point of veiw, and I'm no stranger to
the flame.
Hey Mike ,
If :
Birth -> Death
Delusion -> Clarity
Clarity -> Delusion

Then would death -> birth

Are you talking about reincarnation?
  

    
"It's a hand-me-down, the thoughts are broken"

What breaks up the thought, other than death?
The thoughts are handed down,
generation to generation.

"There is a road, no simple highway
Between the dawn and the dark of night
And if you go, no one may follow
That path is for your steps alone"

If the road is life,
between birth and death,
Then why does he say "if" you go?
  

    
I usually hear that as the road to enlightenment.
  

    
If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine
If my words did glow with the gold of sunshine
And my tunes were played on the harp unstrung
Would you hear my voice come through the music?
Would you hold it near, as it were your own?

Hunter musing on the difficulties of his, and the GD's, art. Even if
we were able to impart The Truth, would you (the other, the audience)
recognise it as such? Or is The Truth something that each tourist must
locate for themselves, maybe even a different Truth for each tourist?

It's a hand-me-down, the thoughts are broken
Perhaps they're better left unsung
I don't know, don't really care
Let there be songs to fill the air

Hunter musing on the Muse, echoing what has been said by Garcia, Weir
and many others - that the music is already out there and the artist is
a medium through which it can be expressed, and then, no matter what
the skill of the artist, imperfectly. The artist does not debate
whether it might be better to leave the perfect streams untapped. The
artist is compelled to access the source and communicate as best their
skills allow.
  

    



barbm writes:




So glad I found this website.  Heard someone sing "Scarlet Begonias" and I
started surfing for the lyrics, which I found, then y'know I just kept
going.  I've been singing Ripple with lots of people for lots of years, it's
that kind of song.  Thought a lot about what it means to me.  I agree with
jewel that the road seems like it leads to enlightenment.  I didn't know
about the "fountain not made by the hand of man" in Kublai Khan poem, but my
old-time Jesus friends talk about the "fountain of grace" which is what this
song makes me think about.  I think it is a psalm or prayer, addressed not
to God but rather to a person.

"You who choose to lead must follow" is deep for me.  Leading means you need
to have a destination in mind, like a goal or a purpose or a place where you
are taking the people that follow you.  So to get there you need to follow a
path or a person or a signal, like the sound of the music either in the air
or in your soul.  In this case I think it is the water image, the sound of
the fountain rushing down only to rise again.

The Ripple in Still Water seems to represent the person being sung to.  A
ripple that rises without wind or "a pebble tossed" must come from life
hidden beneath the surface.  I think it sounds like it's from a teacher to
the disciple who is rippling with the desire to be enlightened.

Just my take on this beautiful song.
  

    
The "gold (or cold) of sunshine" couples well with "harp unstrung" as
images of dialectic contradiction, a fundamental element of popular zen
philosophy. 

On that level the entire lyrics of Ripple can be read as a zen
buddhist screed. 

The chorus refrain, where there is no pebble tossed, expresses the
buddhist's answer to Western attachment to the causation worldview.   
  

    

Posted to the GD Hour mailing list by Indradeep Ghosh:



perhaps an accident, but more likely an intention if you, like me, regard
ripple as an allegory for the spiritual path, with the chorus being an
allusion to the quality of mind during deep samadhi. from
http://www.ashidakim.com/zenkoans/zenindex.htm

Nan-in, a Japanese master during the Meiji era (1868-1912), received a
university professor who came to inquire about Zen.

Nan-in served tea. He poured his visitor's cup full, and then kept on
pouring.

The professor watched the overflow until he no longer could restrain
himself. "It is overfull. No more will go in!"

"Like this cup," Nan-in said, "you are full of your own opinions and
speculations. How can I show you Zen unless you first empty your cup?"
  

    
"Let it be known, there is a fountain that was not made by the hands
of men."

This is the line that drew me into the Dead's art.  With so many in
this era suggesting themselves as a solution to others' longings, this
line assured me that dead-heading wasn't idol worship.
  

    
I recall a PBS documentary where Hunter described writing the words to
this song and knowing they would live forever.

I forget his words exactly, but you could see it was the sort of
moment he lives to embrace. It immediately reminded me of that line and
the ecstasy of being caught up into the flow of that fountain.
  

    
Yeah, that was in "Anthem to Beauty."  He wrote three songs in one day, right
after arriving in London.
  

    
Do you know where I can obtain that documentary ?
  

    
you can buy it on amazon. Anthem to Beauty.
  

    
Fantastic doco, thoroughly recommended.
  

    
We just got it from Netflix recently and checked it out for the 2nd or 3rd 
time.
  

    

From a discussion elsewhere in the WELL, posted here for amusement only:


 > "If I knew the way I would take you home."

 Worst pickup line ever.
  

    
And amusing it is! Thanks, David!
  

    
I was reading CG Jung's biography, "Memories, Dreams, Reflections"
(highly recommended BTW) last week and found an interesting comment on
Bethesda, the Place of Grace (and Disgrace). The surface of the
Bethesda pool was sometimes troubled by an Angel (ie there was no
pebble tossed, no wind to blow). According to Wiki, some modern
versions of the Gospel of John omit verses dealing with the troubling
of the waters and the angel, skipping straight from verse 3a to 5.