Listen to this song, and feel it. Somewhere down the crazy river.
Here are the lyrics:
Yeah, I can see it now
The distant red neon shivered in the heat
I was feeling like a stranger in a strange land
You know where people play games with the night
God, it was too hot to sleep
I followed the sound of a jukebox coming from up the levee
All of a sudden I could hear somebody whistling
Fromright behind me
I turned around and she said
“Why do you always end up down at Nick’s Cafe?”
I said “I don’t know, the wind just kind of pushed me this way.”
She said “Hang the rich.”
Catch the blue train
To places never been before
Look for me
Somewhere down the crazy river
Somewhere down the crazy river
Catch the blue train
All the way to Kokomo
You can find me
Somewhere down the crazy river
Somewhere down the crazy river
Take a picture of this
The fields are empty, abandoned ’59 Chevy
Laying in the back seat listening to Little Willie John
Yea, that’s when time stood still
You know, I think I’m gonna go down to Madam X
And let her read my mind
She said “That Voodoo stuff don’t do nothing for me.”
I’m a man with a clear destination
I’m a man with a broad imagination
You fog the mind, you stir the soul
I can’t find, … no control
Catch the blue train
To places never been before
Look for me
Somewhere down the crazy river
Somewhere down the crazy river
Catch the blue train
All the way to Kokomo
You can find me
Somewhere down the crazy river
Somewhere down the crazy river
Wait, did you hear that
Oh this is sure stirring up some ghosts for me
She said “There’s one thing you’ve got to learn
Is not to be afraid of it.”
I said “No, I like it, I like it, it’s good.”
She said “You like it now
But you’ll learn to love it later.”
I been spellbound – falling in trances
I been spellbound – falling in trances
You give me shivers – chills and fever
I been spellbound – somewhere down the crazy river
This is a very sensuous song. It evokes that period in the morning when it is warm, and possibility is in the air, you are alert and waiting, but you don’t know for what.
Add to this her admonition, apparently emotionally congruent with the moment of “Hang the rich”. When I realized that was what he said, this song changed for me.
There is an element to Leftism of what the Germans call “Sehnsucht”, and the Portuguese “saudade”. Looking it up, I see I am not the first to make this connection. That piece is actually worth the read.
For my own purposes, the analogy I use–which admittedly is a strange one–is getting poison oak. I had a summer job in college hiking through the woods, and even though I took care to protect myself, invariably both of my forearms would get completely covered in an itchy rash, that drove me nuts. Running hot water over it both made it worse, and created a sensation of pain, pleasure and release. I have never felt anything like it.
But I feel this longing is always a gap. Now, gaps can be useful: they create space into which you can move, but it is important where that gap is, or alternatively in what direction you choose to move.
Mystical literature is full of “saudade” for God. You see poets like Hafez and Rumi, Kabir, Mirabai, St. John of the Cross, Teresa of Avila and many others describing meetings that are all too short, connections of bliss felt and then withdrawn. I have felt brief flashes myself, of a connection in which the entire universe is experienced as a sea of rich and infinite joy.
I don’t know what the answer is, but I am going to stop because thinking about this makes me sad. I hit it again after a while in a new way.