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What oft was thought — 26 Comments

  1. I’m not sure if I can think of other words (like trite and sappy), that make me disregard everything a critic after them. Perhaps banal.

    However, if the critic’s aim is to announce they’re an elitist douche-canoe, they’re probably the best of words.

  2. neo:

    I agree with you overall, but I’d say “Turn! Turn! Turn!” is a miscue.

    TTT, as written by Pete Seeger, performed by the Byrds and heard by audiences, was an anti-war anthem, very different in feel and impact from “Dust in the Wind.”
    ______________________________________

    To everything – turn, turn, turn
    There is a season – turn, turn, turn
    And a time to every purpose under heaven

    A time to gain, a time to lose
    A time to rend, a time to sew
    A time for love, a time for hate
    A time for peace, I swear it’s not too late!

    –Pete Seeger, “Turn! Turn! Turn! (To Everything There is a Season)”

  3. True Wit is Nature to advantage dress’d
    What oft was thought, but ne’er so well express’d;
    Something whose truth convinced at sight we find,
    That gives us back the image of our mind.

    Am I the only one who read this to the meter of Wayward Son?

  4. When I first heard it at seventeen way back in 1977, it was reasonably thought-provoking for an immortal suburban kid. Yes, it’s been said before, but we’re all introduced to ideas in different ways.

    Plus, it spurred me to learn finger-picking on guitar, which indirectly led to me meeting and marrying the love of my life. I still play and sing it around the campfire. No complaints, even from the most jaded of friends… Except when I try to hit that high “A”

  5. Hearing that song again must have touched something in my mind. In a half-woke state the other day, I was thinking about members of my family who had died. I realized how little I knew of them and how even less will be known by the next generation. I spent a lot of time with my grandfather watching him build furniture in our basement when I was very young, But I never knew anything about him when he was younger. And when my brother and I are gone, no one will know much about my parents, their interests, skills, or values.

  6. huxley:

    I’m referring to the Byrds’ version of the Pete Seeger song, and the words are most definitely about life itself (as well as a portion about peace) and are taken directly from Ecclesiastes. The listeners – I was one of them – probably heard the song in many different ways, but I certainly heard it not as a peace song (or only very very tangentially as a peace song, if that) but as a song about life, death, and the whole riddle of existence.

    Lyrics:

    To everything (turn, turn, turn)
    There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
    And a time to every purpose, under heaven
    A time to be born, a time to die
    A time to plant, a time to reap
    A time to kill, a time to heal
    A time to laugh, a time to weep
    To everything (turn, turn, turn)
    There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
    And a time to every purpose, under heaven
    A time to build up, a time to break down
    A time to dance, a time to mourn
    A time to cast away stones, a time to gather stones together
    To everything (turn, turn, turn)
    There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
    And a time to every purpose, under heaven
    A time of love, a time of hate
    A time of war, a time of peace
    A time you may embrace, a time to refrain from embracing
    To everything (turn, turn, turn)
    There is a season (turn, turn, turn)
    And a time to every purpose, under heaven
    A time to gain, a time to lose
    A time to rend, a time to sow
    A time for love, a time for hate
    A time for peace, I swear it’s not too late.

    Ecclesiastes, King James version:

    To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

    2 A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

    3 A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

    4 A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

    A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

    6 A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

    7 A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

    8 A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

    The passage from Ecclesiastes mentions war and peace, too, but is far from an antiwar tract. The emphasis is somewhat different in the song because the “peace” part adds “I swear it’s not too late,” but the song is about a great deal more than that. And note that earlier in the song, right after “A time of love, a time of hate,” it uses the lyric “A time of war, a time of peace.”

  7. expat:

    I’ve been thinking about that sort of thing lately, too.

    They say that people die twice. The first time when they actually die, and the second when the last person who knew them dies.

  8. For what it’s worth, “Dust In the Wind” is trite and sappy.

    On purpose.

    Kerry Livgren, per John Bennett’s comment, was… literally doing finger-picking exercises on his guitar. His wife (the subject of the third verse of one of my favorite Kansas songs, What’s On My Mind) heard him, said it sounded pretty, and that he should put lyrics to them. He chose a few thoughts from the Native American tribe the state is named after (the People of the South Wind), put the two together, and created one of Kansas’ monster hits.

    I don’t remember which band member said it—probably Phil Ehart—but one of them said “Kerry was great at writing hits, but terrible at knowing when he had.” “Dust in the Wind” is probably the finest example of that point I know.

  9. Paul Snively:

    I don’t see how their method of composing makes the lyrics trite and sappy – on purpose or otherwise. Particularly “sappy,” the definition of which is “sweet and sentimental.” I see nothing sweet about those lyrics.

  10. Ive never cared for the song myself. Its central assertion an offputting but perfect blend of ennui and nihilism.

    “All we do crumbles to the ground
    Though we refuse to see

    [Chorus]
    Dust in the wind
    All we are is dust in the wind” my emphasis

    A perfect rejection of even the possibility of a beneficent creator, an immortal soul and existence in a far better afterlife in which justice prevails.

    A nihilistic triumph set to music.

    Released in 1977; Jimmy Carter the new President. Massive Inflation, long, even-odd Gas Lines and the Iran hostages. A seemingly invincible Soviet Empire. The aftermath in Vietnam, America’s first ‘defeat’.

    No wonder they were depressed.

    I’m a bit surprised that it isn’t the unofficial anthem of today’s democrat party. Of course, there’s still time for its adoption as such.

  11. Ahh, The Rubaiyat! I discovered it in high school. I was never much for poetry in general, but I have always liked it.

  12. neo: I don’t see how their method of composing makes the lyrics trite and sappy – on purpose or otherwise. Particularly “sappy,” the definition of which is “sweet and sentimental.” I see nothing sweet about those lyrics.

    That’s a fair point. Maybe the critic was using “sappy” differently than you or I would, to refer to an overabundance of a kind of “faux profundity” that, heaven knows, progressive rock in the 1970s tended to leave itself open to. To be clear, I’m agreeing with you. The point of the story I shared is that Livgren’s wife recognized the beauty in the simplicity of the finger exercises and Livgren himself apparently apprehended the tension between the brightness of the guitar and the theme of the lyrics—or at least so it seems to me. Regardless, I believe it deserved its success, even if there are quite a few Kansas songs I like even more, sometimes for reasons I know are quite idiosyncratic, such as that Lightning’s Hand is, classically, a toccata and fugue.

  13. neo:

    Yes, I’m aware that most of the words to “Turn!” are from Ecclesiastes.

    Nonetheless I’d say that Seeger’s addition: “I swear it’s not too late” is so radically different from Ecclesiastes that it becomes a positive affirmation turning E on its head, as opposed to the “vanity of vanities” cries from the heart.

    Furthermore, by excerpting only those few lines from Ecclesiastes, “Turn!” erases the world-weariness present in E in favor of a Circle of Life worldview.

    When “Turn!” came out I was excited to hear that it was based on the Bible. So I read Ecclesiastes and was quite disappointed that it seemed to have little to do with the song.

  14. Also, I’d go with Geoffrey Britain that “Dust in the Wind” only catches one aspect of Ecclesiastes and misses the God part.

    Ecclesiastes spreads a bigger table than “Dust.”

  15. huxley:

    That line about peace stuck out more for you than it did for me. Obviously. But it’s not a given that it sticks out so much, especially since the song also says “a time for war” earlier.

    To me, it resembles Ecclesiastes 3:1-8 very geatly. I don’t see why you say it has “little to do” with it.

    Of course it doesn’t capture all of Ecclesiastes. How could it? But it pretty much corresponds to that very famous section.

  16. I didn’t dig “Dust in the Wind” much back in the day, and I’m afraid that hasn’t changed much. The song came off to me like cynicism (why care, nothing matters anyway) wrapped in music that was a bit pretentious. Incoherence between the music and lyrics when you think of it.

    The Rubaiyat excerpt made me think of Ozymandias (“My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings. Look on my works, ye mighty, and despair!”). One of my very favorites…

  17. Geoffrey Britain; pikkumatti :

    I would describe the lyrics of “Dust In the Wind” more as puzzlement and gloom over the mystery of existence and how little seems permanent in the face of death. The lyrics speak of the transience of each human life on earth. The singer doesn’t know what might come later – but he does know what he sees here.

    In addition, Ecclesiastes has another famous passage (1) that I think the song recalls. Not the same one as “Turn, Turn, Turn,” but this one:

    The words of the Preacher, the son of David, king in Jerusalem.

    2Vanity of vanities, saith the Preacher, vanity of vanities; all is vanity.

    3What profit hath a man of all his labour which he taketh under the sun?

    4One generation passeth away, and another generation cometh: but the earth abideth for ever.

    5The sun also ariseth, and the sun goeth down, and hasteth to his place where he arose.

    6The wind goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the north; it whirleth about continually, and the wind returneth again according to his circuits.

    7All the rivers run into the sea; yet the sea is not full; unto the place from whence the rivers come, thither they return again.

    8All things are full of labour; man cannot utter it: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.

    9The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.

    10Is there any thing whereof it may be said, See, this is new? it hath been already of old time, which was before us.

    11There is no remembrance of former things; neither shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come with those that shall come after.

    And then there’s this part (1:14), which in most translations mentions wind.

    Is Ecclesiastes nihilist? Some thoughts:

    The presence of Ecclesiastes in the Bible is something of a puzzle, as the common themes of the Hebrew canon—a God who reveals and redeems, who elects and cares for a chosen people—are absent from it, which suggests that Kohelet had lost his faith in his old age. Understanding the book was a topic of the earliest recorded discussions (the hypothetical Council of Jamnia in the 1st century CE). One argument advanced at that time was that the name of Solomon carried enough authority to ensure its inclusion; however, other works which appeared with Solomon’s name were excluded despite being more orthodox than Ecclesiastes. Another was that the words of the epilogue, in which the reader is told to fear God and keep his commands, made it orthodox; but all later attempts to find anything in the rest of the book that would reflect this orthodoxy have failed. A modern suggestion treats the book as a dialogue in which different statements belong to different voices, with Kohelet himself answering and refuting unorthodox opinions, but there are no explicit markers for this in the book, as there are (for example) in the Book of Job. Yet another suggestion is that Ecclesiastes is simply the most extreme example of a tradition of skepticism, but none of the proposed examples match Ecclesiastes for a sustained denial of faith and doubt in the goodness of God. “In short, we do not know why or how this book found its way into such esteemed company”, summarizes Martin A. Shields in his 2006 book The End of Wisdom: A Reappraisal of the Historical and Canonical Function of Ecclesiastes.

    Well, I certainly don’t know either, but it’s there. I think it’s there to tell people that these doubts and fears are often part of life, even the life of someone religious or someone seeking religion and guidance towards religion.

  18. When I listened to the clip the other day, what came to my mind was what I hear every Ash Wednesday: “Remember, O man, that thou are dust, and to dust thou shalt return.”

  19. Not going to say anything about Pete Seeger.

    If we’re going to get all elegaic, these lines are more fitting for we backwater blog-commenting bloviators:

    Some village-Hampden, that with dauntless breast
    The little tyrant of his fields withstood;
    Some mute inglorious Milton here may rest,
    Some Cromwell guiltless of his country’s blood.

    Th’ applause of list’ning senates to command,
    The threats of pain and ruin to despise,
    To scatter plenty o’er a smiling land,
    And read their hist’ry in a nation’s eyes,

    Their lot forbade: nor circumscrib’d alone
    Their growing virtues, but their crimes confin’d;
    Forbade to wade through slaughter to a throne,
    And shut the gates of mercy on mankind,

    The struggling pangs of conscious truth to hide,
    To quench the blushes of ingenuous shame,
    Or heap the shrine of Luxury and Pride
    With incense kindled at the Muse’s flame.

    Far from the madding crowd’s ignoble strife,
    Their sober wishes never learn’d to stray;
    Along the cool sequester’d vale of life
    They kept the noiseless tenor of their way.

    Yet ev’n these bones from insult to protect,
    Some frail memorial still erected nigh,
    With uncouth rhymes and shapeless sculpture deck’d,
    Implores the passing tribute of a sigh.

    (Noiseless Tenor might be a stretch.)

  20. I read that aloud to my offspring, who likes the Rubayat, and was told but it’s not ‘thy wit’ it’s ‘your wit’, and then the Offspring went off to the printed copy of all translations. They’re both right. Your is in the 3rd translation.

    I’ve always liked the music of Dust in the Wind.

  21. Nice discussion!
    Ecclesiastes, Gray, Khayyam, & modern music – where else do we get that kind of range & depth?

    Just dropped in to eavesdrop on the conversation.
    Still on vacation, and still just as lazy.

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