Wisdom communicated through pop music.

Post Reply New Topic

"row, row,row your boat
gently down the stream
merrily,merrily,merrily,merrily
life is but a dream"

Like all Western children, I learned this song sometime in toddlerhood. I always thought it was such an incredible song. It attached itself to me when I was a little kid and I thought itwas more important somehow than any of the other songs I learned like Eensy,Weensy Spider or Jack and Jill.

It always stuck to me through childhood. I knew it was somehow more than all the other little kid songs but I didn't have the vocabulary or experience to know why.

In highschool I learned about the maya/illusion concept and suddenly understood that that's what "life is but a dream" was trying to tell me. In college I learned about meditation and mindfulness and finding the joy through that and suddenly understood that's what "row,row,row tour boat, gently down the stream, merrily merrily, merrily" was trying to tell me.

I hope this song never leaves the children's song canon.

I really like this music. Reminds me a bit of Dead Can Dance. Thanks for posting.

Here's one with a bit of a Taoist twang, just came up in my FB feed.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GPK0Oy2b0MI[/youtube]

See those trees
Bend in the wind
I feel they've got a lot more sense than me
You see I try to resist

A rubberband bouncing back to life
A rubberband bend the beat
If I could learn to give like a rubberband
I'd be back on my feet

I've just finished reading Kate Bush's biography.She's very thoughtful and inventive in her music and was ahead of her time when it came to performing and creating images.

Nick007 referred earlier to a Billy Joel song.I think some of his lyrics are very clever,e.g.

River Of Dreams -
We're all searching for something
something so undefined
that it can only be seen
by the eyes of the blind
in the middle of the night