I confess. I never watched “Grey’s Anatomy.” All those years it was Thursday night programming, I had appointments on Thursday nights. But now I’ve been binge-watching on Netflix. Besides creating characters you love or hate, Shonda Rhimes was a master of finding amazing songs for the soundtracks. The show is introducing me to a world of new music. Those songs made me think, made me feel, gave storylines the perfect punch.
Season 5, Episode 21 (which first aired on April 30, 2009) featured “Turn and Turn Again” by All Thieves. The vocal quality knocked me out, and the peaceful feeling of it. I didn’t analyze. It was just art flowing over me. Wow. Inarticulate wow. I shared a link to the song with a friend, who responded, without saying if she liked it or not, “What particularly grabs you about this song?”
Well, damn. So then I was on the spot. Esplain yourself, Lucy!
I was surprised to discover in the lyrics a prompt to say something out loud about politics. I don’t want to step on any toes, and I don’t want mine stepped on. But just listen to this song. Please.
Note that I hold no rights to the video or the lyrics, copied here. Here’s the link:
And the lyrics:
Worn from walking this far
So worn from talking this much
And what we found and what we’ve seen
As the road curves down
And the lights come up to meet us
Silent for the evening
We enter this town
Like new born creatures
Those I know I see anew
And the space between us is reduced
For I am human
And you are human too
So turn and turn again
We are calling in all the ships
Every traveler, please come home
And tell us all that you have seen
Break every lock to every door
Return every gun to every draw
So we can turn And turn again
Only priests and clowns can save us now
Only a sign from God or a hurricane
Can bring about
The change we all want
And we’ve done it again
This trick we have
Of turning love to pain
And peace to war
We’re just ash in a jar
So turn and turn again
We are calling in all the ships
Every traveler, please come home
And tell us all that you have seen
Break every lock to every door
Return every gun to every draw
So we can turn And turn again
Writer(s): Mark Bates, Rollo Armstrong, Tzuke Bailey
Wow. So here’s what I think.
“The road curves down… And the lights come up to meet us ” –We’re in a difficult, painful place. But something awaits us.
“We enter this town Like new born creatures” –With “beginner’s mind”, we might discover something wondrously unexpected here.
“Those I know I see anew” –Life bursts forth out of a rigid absolute that I encased in concrete long ago.
“I am human…and you are human too” –There’s an unexpected glimpse of heart behind armor. We have more in common with one another than differences. We are all bearers of light, shadowed by the effects of the darkness. Wisdom and ignorance in each of us.
“Every traveler, please come home… And tell us all that you have seen” –Could we try to hear one another? –After not listening for so long, and only bashing each other, pushing our own agendas onto one another, trying to shout over each other’s voices to make our own message heard and suppress the other.
Might we find a way to believe that the other voices, even those who oppose our ideas, have their own reasons for their belief, based on perspectives emerging from experience, even if it’s different from ours?
“Return every gun to every draw [drawer?] … so we can turn…and turn again” –Laying down our weapons, hearing one another, could we subvert destruction, see the pain in each guarded heart, nurture seedlings instead of torching forests?
“Only priests and clowns can save us now… Only a sign from God or a hurricane… Can bring about… The change we all want” –Does it take a hurricane to make us kind to one another for a minute? I’m not taking “priests” as literal religious figures, although maybe… But grace–something radical, out-of-the-box, a supernatural or serendipitous unfolding that opens into an alteration we couldn’t generate by rational means. Surprise! Wouldn’t grace be good? Standard operating procedures have gotten us to exactly where we are.
“And we’ve done it again… This trick we have… Of turning love to pain… And peace to war” –We’ve screwed it up again, negated what good had been accomplished, as humans do over and over. Of course we do. Another predictable social cycle of expansion, then contraction, then expansion, like all the cycles preceding. A liberal movement, or conservative, and then the opposition response, then back again…. Because we are never satisfied to hold to a course that isn’t an immediate and perfect fix to our dilemmas.
Because humans get uneasy in the face of ambiguity. We want bumper-sticker simplicity. Longing for perfection, we destroy the good. We clutch at something different, and then we don’t like how that works out…. We’ve become marbles in a pinball machine, only ricochets and flashing lights.
My own heart’s highest expression of what is right and good, moral and ethical—for me—only rankles with folks I cherish for entirely separate reasons. I don’t expect we’ll be suddenly simpatico if I insist how wrong they are. They’d surely tell me I’m the one who’s nuts. And then where are we?
Listen. Maybe we could hear each other. And turn again.
