Thursday, September 11, 2003
Put it in your heart
posted by John Davies at 11:19 AM
Martin Wroe: Put it In Your Heart seems to be an oblique response to September 11, 2001?
Bruce Cockburn: Yes, it is, occasioned by two things. Initially seeing Jerry Falwell on TV, three days after 9/11, with Pat Robertson sitting beside him, discussing how 'this whole terrible tragedy was caused by gays and lesbians and people who've had abortions.' And he's looking at me, and my initial response was. 'Somebody shoot that son of a bitch.'
Then I realised that here he is looking to lay blame for this thing and throwing it anywhere based on his pet theories. And there is Osama bin Laden, representing his own theories and his constituency are angry and fearful and bitter. And Falwell is responding in the same way. And now here am I responding like that. OK, here is a very clear chain and it has to be broken and how do we break it ? Meditating on that produced the song, the understanding that the only way to cope with things like this is to take them into our hearts. Not to stand back and judge and fear. You have to dive right in.As I stare into the flame
filled up with feelings I can't name
Images of life appear
regret and anger, love and fear
Dark things drift across the screen
of mind behind whose veil are seen
love's ferocious eyes, and clear
the words come flying to my ear
"Go on - put it in your heart
Put it in your heart"
Terrible deeds done in the name
of tunnel vision and fear of change
surely are expressions of
a soul that's turned its back on love
All the sirens all the tongues
The song of air in every lung
Heaven's perfect alchemy
put me with you and you with me
Come on - put that in your heart
Come on - put it in your heart
All the sirens all the tongues
The song of air in every lung
Heaven's perfect alchemy
Put me with you and you with me
Come on - put it in your heart
Come on - put it in your heart Bruce Cockburn: One of the things I try to say in You've Never Seen Everything is that you can look at all this darkness and the horrible aspects of human behaviour and you can become cynical as a response and that is useless. That is never seeing 'the light falling all around'. But if you put it in your heart you still retain the capacity to feel the presence of light as well. All my albums are about me going through my own spiritual changes and this is a case in point. The older I get I kid myself that I am getting deeper, and this is what I have to say about it at the moment.
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john davies
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