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Re: a question of meaning



Black Draver wrote:

> Yep. replying to my own message...


those are always the best, aren't they?


> So when she/he says:
> "Isaac's Knife can cut away
> all the poisoned yesterdays."    It means taking faith (trust if you will)
> that is so big as to allow someone to kill you and using that same principle
> to get rid of all the guilt and regret that holds you back.


So you're reading the lyric to be directed towards Isaac... hmmmm... 
interesting thought. I'd assumed it was directed towards Abraham, since 
when people usually mention the story, they bring up how Isaac was 
Jehovah's promised son, for whom Abe had waited 25 years, and that 
Jehovah's request for Abe to sacrifice him was really just a big lesson 
to teach Abe not to hold on to things too tightly, a lesson old Abe 
needed to learn, if you conisder what a schmuck he was to Ishmael and 
Hagar.
So I was reading it in a more, er, Budhist sense, I guess- the idea of 
non-attachment. Or, to quote a diferent band (u2) : "you can hold on to 
something so tight/you're already lost it."


   In
> this sense, Isaac's knife is a powerful tool and it *does* become his. I mean
> after all, if I'm going to allow someone to kill me, then that weapon in a
> sense becomes mine--I give the power to use it.  


Nicely put.


> 
> Then the song continues:
> "and the anger
> ease it down
> into the ocean
> let it drown"   Another Christian reference to washing away your sins?


I don't know if it's a sin reference or not. I do think it could apply 
to any of the part sof the self that one doesn't want there anymore. The 
  lyric focuses on anger, but I could see how "the poison of yesterday" 
could be anything- that bit of the self that just *needs* to die, to be 
chiseled away.

The lyric reminds me of a Pearl Jam lyric:
  "let the...ocean...dissolve away my mask...three days...maybe 
longer... shed my skin at last" (from "Last Exit")

The whole concept kind of reminds me of what Thomas Merton called "the 
false self," an idea he picked up when he was a Marxist, before he 
became a monk. (In Marxism, the false self is that self which is 
constructed for you by forces outside yourself (with your capitulation, 
of course)- for Engels (I know, I know, if Engels came up with it, why 
is Marxism?) the false self was the self that thought it could become 
better through acquisition, for e.g.)
For Merton, the false self was anything that you allowed to overshadow 
your "real" self. Your real self, for Merton was you as created by God, 
the you that really wants to do good things, the you that isn't obsessed 
with what others think. Merton stressed the putting away of the false 
self quite a bit in his book "New Seeds of Contemplation."


> then:
> "as far as east is
> from the west
> I let you go
> I know it's best"  

>is yet another Christian principle that offers a human
> perspective on the forgiveness of Christ. 


I'm going to be picky and object here: b/c it's from Psalm 103, I 
personally don't consider the reference to be about Christ, but about 
Jehovah...
It's funny: I love the beautiful stuff in that Psalm about God being 
forgiving and loving and being the champion of the oppressed, but I have 
a hard time getting over the way the Psalm practically beats you over 
the head with its constant references to the fact that this only counts 
for Jews. I know that it's just because the Jews back then were, like 
everyone else, worshipping a largely tribal god, and that Jehovah 
wouldn't be understood as a god for everyone until after the Babylonian 
captivity, but still, it makes the Psalm hard to read, me not being a 
Jew and all...

 


 
> "There's no saviour hanging on this
> cross"  in no certain terms is saying stop trying to make yourself a martyr.


Wow. That's an interesting interpretation. I always read that lyric as 
saying the opposite- expressing the doubt OtR often expresses w/r/t 
faith stuff- i.e., just as the characters in "Happy to Be So" and "I 
Radio Heaven" get no response to thier prayers, so the character in this 
song can't see the savior on the cross, but, like Kierkegaard, they have 
faith anyway. It kind of fits, after all with the whole Kierkegaardian 
theme of Abraham trusting God when ofing poor Isaac. I see where you get 
what you got out of it, though I'm not sure it's a leap I'd make. But, 
fo course, maybe that'e the crux of the diference right there- I tend to 
feel like that doubting-but-faithful character in OtR songs pretty often.


> Tom Waits put it
> rather succinctly with "come down off the cross, we can use the wood."


Which reminds me: every time I read your email address, I hear "The 
Black Rider" in my head.

Ahhhh, must get some work done.

-John

-- 
++++++++++++++++++++++++++
"The market is the reason our housing is so expensive. It is the reason 
our public transportation is lousy. It is the reason our cities sprawl 
idiotically all across the map. It is the reason our word processing 
programs stink and our prescription drugs cost more than anywhere else. 
In order that a fortunate few might enjoy a kind of prosperity unequaled 
in human history, the rest of us have had to abandon ourselves to a 
lifetime of casual employment, to unquestioning obedience within an 
ever-more arbitrary and despotic corporate regime, to medical care 
available on a maybe/maybe-not basis, to a housing market interested in 
catering only to the fortunate. "
	-Thomas Frank
++++++++++++++++++++++++++

http://www.johnpauldavis.org

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