the wonder of it all, baby!

As You Lie There establishes a curious relationship between time and space right from the beginning. Allegedly about a teenage crush, the title indicates an address to someone who is elsewhere (There) NOW, and appropriately, the lyrics shift between past and present tense: from “I used to...” to “do I ever?” and then on into the future: “I like to think that we could be together forever.” @i-am-the-oyster suggested that “the room beyond the blind” might refer to a place “beyond the veil,” which feels very true to me and informs this whole album reading. While blindS are a window treatment that obscure light, Paul uses the singular form of the word — “blind,” or sightless. Who might inhabit a place of knowledge beyond sight if not those on the other side?

I’ve written before about my thoughts on Paul’s use of movement-centered language in his lyrics, as a means of navigating not only space but time and love and memory and the complex intersection between these concepts, with The Road as a path that leads us beyond them. On that note, the recurring travel theme on TBODL is really something, and Paul sums it up here quite succinctly: “That sound can take me back to the lost horizon / Where every memory we shared / Brought us closer together.” We’re moving through the Now on the long and winding road toward the Lost Horizon, toward “the start of the first day of forever.” It’s not lost at all if the sound is taking him there, still.

I wrote here and here about Days We Left Behind, and, God, this song feels even more poignant now that I’ve had a chance to explore the full album. I implore you to watch this short video featuring David Lynch, where he discusses TM and the concept (theorized in centuries-old Vedic texts but proven only recently by quantum physicists) that all things emerge from of a unified field of no-thing; you can’t access this field, this place, with your physical body, but it’s everywhere — this nothing has always been and always will be. A little extra thought I’ve been thinking: when Paul sings “Some of them will feel the pain,” I suspect that he’s referring to himself, to all of us, while “some were meant for more” are those who’ve moved beyond life as we know it, like those skylarks.

That same idea seems to be emphasized by Ripples in a Pond: “Reaching out to the universe, skimming across the sky / If you say that I've been through worse / I'll have to say that's something that I couldn't deny.” It’s a heavy lyric, but the song itself is so light; just one of the album's many, many contradictions that manage to coexist in harmony. Between the imagery here and the overarching themes we've been introduced to thus far, I can’t help but think of The Grateful Dead’s Ripple — it's the same idea of persistence through music, of music carrying so much more than notes and words, of walking our own road, all the while believing that what moves through us doesn’t end with us.

Speaking of reaching out to the universe, I’ve seen quite a few people suggest that Mountain Top evokes the Emperor of Eternity trip; I don’t disagree, but I think it’s more expansive than that. This is a now and then song (“any time,” “when you’ve got time,” “ever,” “now”) that's flooded with cosmic imagery, another bus ride to some elsewhere. To me, this doesn’t feel like it’s about a particular trip so much as it is about the beyond-places a trip can take us, where apparent contradictions begin to make sense: where we get a grip in order to slip away, where away itself is a space where we can stay.

Down South is purportedly about a different kind of trip, or maybe trips, but I think these journeys are more similar than they initially seem — which is, perhaps, another of the album's most prevalent themes. These trips can teach us about each other and about ourselves and about life: “It was a good way to get to know you / A fine way to work it all out.” We make new discoveries only through exploration. Also — the intersection of homoeroticism and spirituality (and navigating this conjuncture with humor) in Paul’s writing! It does not take much effort at all, imo, to find a rich vein of that theme here.

Man. I don’t know what I can say about We Two that Paul doesn’t say himself with stunning clarity: “Always, Always, my friend / you’ll be the only one,” “Over, over again / I'll be in love with you.” There’s a place, a life beyond this one where J&P can live for love, over and over and always, “I’ll be there til the end.” This is an ontological vow, and I feel pretty certain this is The Promise.

Come Inside: Someone's knocking at the door and it's ME!! Let me in!!!!!!!

The great mystery is beautiful but it’s also kind of torturous, isn’t it? Never Know definitely feels like an expression of uncertainty in the face of all that wonder, but really, it’s an incredible display of faith: carrying on without the answers, in spite of all the danger. Just as we can never really know what another person feels, we’ll never know what’s coming next until it comes for us — all we can do is invest our time and our efforts and our hearts into what we believe: “I'm gonna take the time / To prove that I care / Don't mind as long as I'm with you / I've got to make you see / I'll always be there / I only want to be with you.” Knowledge is beside the point, Paul is keeping his promise.

Home to Us is probably the album’s most explicit recollection of there and then through the eyes of the here and now, once the perspective of distance and time has allowed for Paul to see home differently. The roses have turned to dust but there were still roses, the toast was burnt but it was still something to eat, the sun went down on those kids in the alley but, through the song, they’re still playing. For me, these images call to mind the dust covered roses and empty alleys of T.S. Eliot’s Burnt Norton, where time doesn’t really move in one direction so much as fold back through places we have already been, or almost been, or can only enter in memory — where memory is what we’re forever moving toward: “We didn't worry / where the road was going to lead us to.” There’s that road, again, taking us ever onward, back to the beginning.

Life Can Be Hard kind of builds upon the logic of Never Know with the new perspective of Home to Us. This is Paul taking a sad song and making it better. He doesn’t deny the hard part or try to explain it away, he just keeps moving. Life is difficult, but he still plays, she still dances, and maybe that’s the whole point: carrying on without answers isn't simply surviving the mystery, but finding joy in the fact that we can always begin again, as love continues to give us reasons to want to. I hear Nancy here, and Linda, and Paul's daughters, and maybe mother Mary most of all. I wonder if “she” might ultimately be a really beautiful representation of the dance between life and death — she calls him on, to a place beyond the needs for earthly sustenance or verbal communication. She’s a surprise, she’s enchanting, she’s a mystery. She’s a promise.

First Star of the Night really just emphasizes all of that ^ to me. There’s rain, but it’s alright. After the day is done, there’s a light in the darkness.

Salesman Saint seems to pull the whole thing open. It’s about Paul’s parents, obviously, but really, I think it’s about all of us. It’s about the struggles of war and the struggles of ordinary life made bearable by simple pleasures — tea and cigarettes and laughter and music — with peace waiting just beyond. The balance required of us in the interim is right there in the title: Salesman and Saint, hard work and soft grace, opposites not separate but entwined. Survival itself is rendered as something sacred, God-given minutes are exchanged for a place to call home for the time we’re here. And still — there are roads coming in, another generation yearns to be free, an endless cycle of recursion, of learning to carry on. The same as it ever was, in the end as in the beginning.