Christianity & the Arts, Winter 2000

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Christianity & the Arts Online

Winter 2000

Homecoming Lyrics of Canadian Songwriter By Brian Walsh

At home in the darkness but hungry for dawn . . .

Forgetfulness is the temptation of homelessness. Elie Wiesel puts it this way: "The one who forgets to come back has forgotten the home he or she came from and where he or she is going. Ultimately, one might say that the opposite of home is not distance but forgetfulness. One who forgets, forgets everything, including the roads leading homeward."

This relation of home and memory is, of course, not alien to the Scriptures. Indeed, it is precisely forgetfulness that is seen to occasion the homelessness of exile, and it is memory that keeps the vision of homecoming alive while in exile. "Don't forget where you have come from, who led you out of slavery and who gave you this bountiful land," says Deuteronomy 8, lest you go into exile. And when exile does befall forgetful Israel, it is memory of Yahweh's past faithfulness - memories of Abraham and Sarah, Noah, David, indeed of creation and exodus - that funds the prophetic imagination and keeps alive the vision of homecoming.

If home is a place of deeply rooted memories, then homelessness is a state of amnesia in which we forget who we are precisely because we forget where we come from. And as long as the amnesia holds, there is no way back, no homecoming.

The themes of home, homelessness, and homecoming, together with the motif of memory, are ubiquitous in the lyrics of Canadian songwriter and performer, Bruce Cockburn. From his earliest , Cockburn appears as a pilgrim who bears "the dream of a homeland" in his heart. Here is an artist on a quest, on a path, that is ultimately directed to homecoming.

This theme is established with a simple eloquence in the early song, "One Day I Walk" on the 1971 High Winds White Sky .

one day i walk in flowers one day i walk on stones today i walk in hours one day i shall be home

Such experiences of home are the stuff of memories, the imaginative source of visions of homecoming. In his song "" (from the album, Joy Will Find A Way, 1975), Cockburn sings:

make me a bed of fond memories make me to lie down with a smile

The memories of home are fond. They are the kinds of thoughts that afford one a peaceful night's sleep.

But what happens when the memories are nightmares and one is beset with insomnia? What if home is a site

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of terribly broken memories? What if it is memories that stand in the way of homecoming? In "Gavin's Woodpile" (from , 1976) Cockburn recounts the experience of splitting wood "safe within the harmony of kin." But then "visions begin to crowd my eyes / like a meteor shower in the autumn skies."

These visions are broken and painful memories of a "bleak-eyed prisoner" in a federal facility, or the "death in the marrow and death in the liver" of aboriginal peoples suffering from mercury poisoning in Northern Ontario. As these memories weigh down upon the artist "a helpless rage seems to set" his "brain on fire," and he is left to "wonder at the lamp-warm window's welcome smile."

How can there be harmony inside when there is such disharmony outside? How can this home of "fond memories" be sustained in the face of devastating social and ecological displacement?

And things get worse. The split between harmony inside and disharmony outside gets shattered when home becomes a site of disharmony, paralysis, and empty dreams. Consider "Candy Man's Gone"" from the 1983 Trouble With Normal album:

Oh sweet fantasia of the safe home Where nobody has to scrape for honey at the bottom of the comb Where every actor understands the scene And nobody ever means to be mean Catch it in a dream, catch it in a song Seek it on the street, you find the candy man's gone I hate to tell you but the candy man's gone

What then are the prospects for homecoming if home is but a sweet fantasia, a failed dream, a shattered memory? Does the pilgrim devolve into a "grim traveler" ("Grim Travelers" on Humans, 1980) who is filled with rage but has no clear idea as to why he is paralyzed by such anger? Or will he end up displaced, as in "How I Spent My Fall Vacation" (Humans, 1980)?

like Bernie in his dream a displaced person in some foreign border town waiting for a train part hope part myth while the station keeps changing hands

Or is it even worse? Will he end up a "loner" struggling with "days of striving, nights of Novocaine" (as in "Loner," , 1981) or simply be lost, "confused and solo in the spawning ground" of a nomadic, homeless promiscuity ("You Pay Your Money and You Take Your Chance," (Inner City Front, 1981)?

The 1980 song "Fascist Architecture," is pivotal in Cockburn's work at this time. Writing in the context of his own broken marriage and struggling with the issue of what homecoming might look like in the face of a broken home, Cockburn sets a path toward homecoming by acknowledging his complicity in the dynamics of home-breaking:

fascist architecture of my own design too long been keeping my love confined you tore me out of myself alive

The secure home that has crumbled was a well-constructed edifice of well-confined love. Such edifices can only crumble, and there is a severe mercy in the crumbling:

walls are falling and i'm ok under the mercy and i'm ok

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gonna tell my old lady gonna tell my little girl there isn't anything in this world that can lock up my love again

But what does unlocked love look like? In Cockburn's work from the early 1980s to the present such love is the impetus for a radical politicalization. On this reading, abrasive political songs like "Rocket Launcher," "Call it Democracy," "People See Through You," "Stolen Land," and "Where the Death Squad Lives" are impassioned protests against the political and economic forces that have rendered late modernity as the age of the expatriate, the refugee, and the wanderer.

And just as it is the experience of exile that engenders the most powerful poetry of homecoming in Scripture, so also is Cockburn's most eloquent hymn of homecoming written in the context of a shantytown in Pinochet's Chile. In "Santiago Dawn" (World of Wonders, 1985) Cockburn recounts a narrative of revolutionary opposition to an oppressive regime.

at the crack of dawn the first door goes down snapped off a makeshift frame in a matter of minutes the first rock flies barricades burst into flame

first mass rings through the smoke and gas day flowers out of the night creatures of the dark in disarray fall before the morning light

bells of rage-bells of hope as the 10 year night wears down sisters and brothers are coming home to see the Santiago dawn

Santiago sunrise see them marching home see them rising like grass through cement in the Santiago dawn

i got a dream and i'm not alone darkness dead and gone all the people marching home kissing the rush of dawn

The purveyors of strong-armed homelessness are "creatures of the dark" who cannot keep down the ineluctable dream of homecoming in the hearts of all people. The only appropriate response to such violent homelessness is to ring bells of rage, which are bells of hope. Here Cockburn clearly moves beyond the "helpless rage" and paralysis of "Gavin's Woodpile" and learns a hope for homecoming from some of the most desperate of the homeless.

Note, however, when the bells of rage and hope are rung, they are "at the crack of dawn." The bells of homecoming are bells of light against darkness, and they are the eucharistic bells of the first mass. The dangerous pilgrimage toward home is a religious quest undertaken in the face of deep darkness that would render us homeless. And Cockburn here proclaims that the hope of homecoming cannot be snuffed out - not by right - wing dictators, nor by postmodern cynicism. This hope for home is constitutive of the human

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condition. Like grass through cement, it will irrepressibly emerge and animate human action against all odds.

A Sensitivity for Homelessness Authentic homecoming requires both a profound grasp of one's own homelessness and deep solidarity with the most desperate of the homeless. And since Cockburn's work displays both of these stances, it is not surprising that we encounter a delightful sense of settled homecoming in the albums of the early 1990s - Nothing but a Burning Light, 1991, and the romantically beautiful Dart to the Heart, 1993. And while these albums lack some of the lyrical and musical vitality and passion of earlier offerings, and at times border on a smug self-satisfaction ("I ride and I shoot and I play guitar / And I like my life just fine," from "Great Big Love" on Nothing But A Burning Light), there is still much to be learned about homecoming here. For example, while the revolutionary homecoming of "Santiago Dawn" is rooted in a Eucharistic vision that provides the homeless with a memory that is subversive of the forces of the regime, this does not mean that the painful memories of homelessness are erased.

Homecoming is rooted in liberating memories but happens, if at all, in honest confrontation with broken memories. This fine tension between broken memory, liberating memory, and homecoming is profoundly explored in the song that could be seen to capture the thematic heart of these two albums, "Southland of the Heart" on Dart to the Heart.

While the song's refrain, "Lie down / Take your rest with me," is a clear appeal to the liberating memory of Jesus proclaiming, "All you who are weary and heavy laden, come unto me, and I will give you rest," (Matt. 11:28), this invitation home is offered in the face of painful memories. When does one most profoundly need to hear such an invitation to rest?

When the wild-eyed dogs of day to day Come snapping at your heels And there's so much coming at you That you don't know how to feel

And when is a memory of Jesus offering rest to the heavy laden most powerfully evoked?

When thoughts you've tried to leave behind Keeping sniping from the dark and, When your heart's beset by memories you wish you never made

The "rest" of homecoming and the good night's sleep that such rest affords is most authentically received . . .

When the nightmare's creeping closer And your wheels are in the mud When everything's ambiguous Except the taste of blood

The vision of homecoming must always confront the nightmare of broken memories. Home as a place of safety, clarity, and connectedness is always received in the face of life's most fearful ambiguities. But this means that those fears and nightmares are never far away. Homecoming, at least in this life, can never be final. If there is one thing clear about Cockburn's 1996 album, The Charity of Night, it is that any self-satisfied homecoming will always be short-lived. Indeed, if "home" is often construed as a place of escape, then this album claims that there is no escape possible. Representative of this sentiment is "The Whole Night Sky."

Derailed and desperate

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How did I get here? Hanging from this high wire By the tatters of my faith Sometimes a wind comes out of nowhere and Knocks you off your feet and look - see my tears - They fill the whole night sky The whole night sky

And while homecoming happens at dawn when "the creatures of the dark" are in "disarray," this album is primarily concerned with night - and night is often connected with memory.

These two themes come together in "Birmingham Shadows:"

Head full of horror Heart full of night At home in the darkness but hungry for dawn I can only remember scenes, never the stories I live

When our lives have been irrevocably formed by dark memories, then we had better get used to being at home in the darkness. But this is not a defeated acquiescence for Cockburn - an abandonment of the pilgrimage home - because he is still "hungry for dawn." It is just that some of his memories are so horrific that they are untellable as story and become reduced to disjointed, fragmented scenes. Without a story, however, homecoming is impossible. And while Cockburn's dark memories seem to resist narrative, he tries to tell their story anyway. Indeed, the title track, "The Charity of Night," offers us three scenes, three painful memories, that constitute the "haunting hands of memory."

The last cut on the album, "Strange Waters," returns to these memories in the form of a meditation on Psalm 23. Cockburn confesses that through all the paths he has walked and love he has burned, his pilgrimage has been led by a divine hand:

You been leading me Beside strange waters Streams of beautiful Lights in the night

It has not all been dark. There have been streams of beautiful lights in the night. But this pilgrimage is long and it is painful. And the poet is still not home. So Cockburn transposes the thankful confidence of Psalm 23 into a lament:

But where is my pastureland In these dark valleys? If I loose my grip Will I take flight?

It is hard to experience the world as a pastureland, as a home, when you're hanging from a high wire by the tatters of your faith. And so Cockburn asks, if I loose my grip, if I follow my own advice that "everything is bullshit but the open hand" and actually open my hand, will I fall to my death, or will my tattered faith take flight?

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For Cockburn, home is neither an accomplishment nor a possession, but a gift to be received with an open hand. As a gift, home cannot be secured with a tight, self-protective grasp. We must loose our grip and open our hands to an embracing hospitality.

Editor's Note: Bruce Cockburn was born in Ottawa,Ontario, on May 27, 1945, and grew up on a farm outside of Pembroke, Ontario. In the 1960s, his parents bought him an acoustic-electric guitar and insisted he take lessons. He performed with a number of bands and released an album entitled Bruce Cockburn in 1970. Other albums followed, including High Winds White Sky, 1971 and Salt, Sun and Time, 1974. Cockburn's most recent album is Breakfast in New Orleans, Dinner in Timbuktu, 1999, Rykodisc RCD 10407/True North. In this album, he takes a musical journey, taking the listeners to two cities that are vastly different but share the same things, "like soul and heat."

Consult Susan Adams Kauffman's interview with Bruce Cockburn in The Other Side, November-December 1999 issue. 1-800-700-9280

Brian Walsh is the Christian Reformed chaplain at the University of Toronto and teaches theology at Wycliffe College in Toronto, Canada. His e-mail is [email protected].

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