Song Interpretations
Farther On - Jackson Browne
July 28, 2007
Playing with Rory makes me think sometimes of the movie Memento. You may remember that the main character in that movie has no short term memory.. and so every person that he meets is a stranger. Those who knew the character in the past always have to reintroduce themselves. At one point a character notes dryly that he has experienced more fulfilling relationships than this one. Rory recognizes people no problem, but it is odd to think about spending a lot of time with someone who will recall nothing specific about our time. In a week she will not turn to me and say: that was so funny that one afternoon when nobody was around and you made me laugh!
The events may be lost to Rory, but I also know that something incredibly important is going on in her head. She is gaining trust and learning to respond to the world. The moments are blank in her memory, but at the same time they are formative. Looking into her eyes I wonder about the people who looked into my eyes before I could remember them.. and played with me, encouraged my trust, and gave me the love I needed. This process of raising little Rory, more than anything I can remember, has reminded me of the love I have for my own parents.. and their love for me stretching back into the haze of my memory.
In "Farther On" from Late for the Sky (1974) Jackson Browne captures some of what I have been feeling:
To those gentle ones my memory runs
To the laughter we shared at the meals
I filled their kitchens and living rooms
With my schemes and my broken wheels
It was never clear how far or near
The gates to my citadel lay
They were cutting from stone some dreams of their own
But they listened to mine anyway
Rory comes into our lives at the beginning of our professional lives.. but she will grow up looking forward into the beautiful blankness of her own life. That is just the way kids are; they don't get the real context until a long time afterwards. That was true for me especially.. and I probably count as someone who has been full of schemes. I owe a lot to those who listened to my dreams, even as they worked on their own.
Jackson Browne.. especially in his early songs.. has a dark streak. I can't think of anyone else who could end a debut album with a song as preternaturally retrospective as "My Opening Farewell". In the opening stanzas of "Farther On" he picks up some of these themes:
In my early years I hid my tears
And passed my days alone
Adrift on an ocean of loneliness
My dreams like nets were thrown
To catch the love that I'd heard of
In books and films and songs
Now there's a world of illusion and fantasy
In the place where the real world belongs
Still I look for the beauty in songs
To fill my head and lead me on
Though my dreams have come up torn and empty
As many times as love has come and gone
Ah yes, the ocean of loneliness. It is sort of embarrassing now to talk about it.. but what could be more descriptive of those years that congregate on both sides of 20? There were the books and songs I turned to over and over to figure it all out. Jackson Browne was not someone I discovered at that time; he is someone whose music evokes those years and wraps a little wisdom around them.
I love the way he can recognize the illusions in "books and films and songs".. but still not disavow them. His dreams have "come up torn and empty".. and it is clear that those dreams were stirred by the illusions peddled in these unnamed works.. but still he pushes on and looks for the beauty of song "to fill me head and lead me on". It is a Romanticism that has doubled back on itself yet still accepts the central vision.
I'm not sure what I'm trying to say
It could be I've lost my way
Though I keep a watch over the distance
Heaven's no closer than it was yesterday
It is a little disconcerting in any creative work to find yourself half-way or more through it, only to find a line such as "I'm not sure what I'm trying to say"! The east retort would be: well, figure that out before you ask me to listen. But the greatness of Jackson Browne's early work is the palpable sense that he is thinking personal things through in the songs.. and that he does not have an answer in mind. These early songs sketch a broad emotional territory. (This is the reason Browne gets classified as "earnest guy music" in our house.)
But the angels are older
They can see that the sun's setting fast
They look over my shoulder
At the vision of paradise contained in the light of the past
And they lay down behind me
To sleep beside the road till the morning has come
Where they know they will find me
With my maps and my faith in the distance
Moving farther on
This ending cuts a little close to home, this vision of the "older" angels following an explorer.. the angels undoubtedly humored by his certainty of something up there in the distance. Who would want to stop moving farther on? But it is different now with two people I love more than anything in the world. It is still fun to move farther on.. and to spread out the maps.. but that is all. It is fine to move toward the horizon, but I will try not to confuse anything out there with happiness.
more song interpretations:
My Sweet Lord, George Harrison
The Village Green Preservation Society, The Kinks
