River: just wondering...

[mdlbear]

... what it says about me that I never realized that the last verse of Gentle Arms Of Eden is (or might be construed as being) addressed to a human lover rather than metaphorically to the Goddess.

I didn't see it until pocketnaomi wrote an intro for our Norwescon gig that blithely assumed it, and had to sit back and boggle at it for a while. Not sure whether I'm slow, or just more than a little sideways.

Comments

[it-aint-easy.livejournal.com]

Speaking just for myself, that seems a bit of a stretch. It's a creation story. A goddess, probably the embodiment of nature, but conceivably some other goddess, is asked to watch over the singer if he should wander from his home. How would a human lover fit into the rest of the narrative?

[mdlbear]

Good! So it's not just me.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I took it as a human because it is the human people turn to when they are in need of comfort and hope, the human in which they see the goddess. That the metaphors at the end were turned around -- in the chorus, "arms" is metaphoric and "eden" is literal; in the last verse, "beaches" and "seas" are metaphoric, "your love" and "your embrace" are literal -- tells me that, facing an inability to find the Goddess in the world around him anymore, the narrator reaches for her where she's always been... in woman, whatever woman one cherishes. I readily admit that there are other interpretations, but I think this is a valid one.

[mdlbear]

I think it puts a wonderful twist on it; I'm still wondering whether it's significant that I didn't notice it.

[judifilksign.livejournal.com]

I like thinking of it as both.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

So do I. I've been reading a lot of Parke Godwin lately, and he has a line which resounds with me and won't let go. The character is King Harold II, on the eve of the Battle of Hastings, and the woman he's loved all his life and not lived with since he was crowned for political reasons has slipped away from her home and come to be with him the night before the battle:

"Lord, you hear me after all, blessed my arms with her tonight and gave me a simple answer. In the last moment of this world, as in the first, a man will reach to you for meaning and his hand will close about all he can ever grasp: a woman and a hope."

That's what I see in the song, and why I love it so.

[mdlbear]

I like that. Thank you; it does make it a lot clearer.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

You're welcome. Godwin's had a major influence on the way I think about the elements of the sacred to be found in the context of blunt everyday reality. So I suppose it's fitting that he influences my interpretation of one of my favorite "secular hymns."

[mdlbear]

I'm not sure I've ever thought much about "elements of the sacred to be found in the context of blunt everyday reality." Um... yeah. A whole new set of things to think about.

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

I have an unusual definition of sacredness -- unsurprising for an atheist.

[mdlbear]

I think we're pretty close, though I generally classify myself as an agnostic on the technicality of unprovability. (I also classify myself as a "lapsed mathematician"; there's a close connection.)

Have you seen Atheist Barbie?

[pocketnaomi.livejournal.com]

*giggle* No, I hadn't. Thanks for the introduction.

[it-aint-easy.livejournal.com]

I see what you're saying. The last verse puts a new spin on it, moving from an abstract goddess in the abstract past, to a concrete woman in the concrete problems of the present. I can buy that. Indeed, the final line of that verse makes more sense as metaphor than literally.

[mdlbear]

Yes. I had to stare at it sideways for a while, but it did click eventually.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Funny...because I only hear that song in the filk world, I listen with a filk mindset. One of the things about filk that I love is that is a character in a song is invisible, or flying, or a goddess, then by gum, visible-wavelength electromagnetic radiation passes through them, or they are levitating above a planet's surface, or they indeed are a literal female divine being who overnights on Mount Olympus. But in a non-filk song an invisible character just feel like nobody notices them, flying is just a metaphor for ecstatic feelings of love, and a goddes is just a graceful, hot dame that the writer admires.

Or at least that's my perception, which may or may not have anything to do with reality.