This, That, and the Other

For this week’s Thursday Inspiration prompt, Jim Adams has asked us to write a post using the prompt word “river” and the photo above or “anything else that you think fits.”

Look at the image above and how calm the water in the river is. It’s so calm it almost looks like a mirror, reflecting the ancient granite cliffs on either side. It’s bucolic, beautiful, serene. But that was before the deluge. Before the earth was abused by the men who learned how to forge her beauty into power.

These are the words — the lyrics — from the song, “Before the Deluge” written and sung by Jackson Browne from his second album, Late for the Sky.

The song spoke of anger at those who had forged the earth’s “beauty into power,” and warned of the “magnitude of her fury in the final hour.” It could almost have been written today, although Browne sadly points out that our situation is now even more dangerous than it was when he wrote this prescient song fifty years ago!

“That song was inspired by a writer named Paul Ehrlich,” Browne said. “He laid forth a scenario in which the world’s dysfunctions compound and create an apocalyptic outcome, but even he couldn’t have predicted the calamitous situation we’re in now where we have a world leader who is flagrantly disregarding information from the scientific community.”

Brown is obviously talking about the once and possibly future president, Donald Trump…and his sycophant Republican enablers. But let’s not focus on politics.

Before most other songwriters were dealing with it, Browne’s “Before the Deluge” focuses on on the fragility of the environment and how easily ideals can be compromised.

The group of people at the heart of the song start with the best intentions: With the energy of the innocent / They were gathering the tools / They would need to make their journey back to nature. But these idealistic people encountered resistance and, instead of fighting to preserve and save nature, the took the easy way out.

Once their brave and crazy wings of youth grow torn and tattered, they settle: And in the end they traded their tired wings / For the resignation that living brings / And exchanged love’s bright and fragile glow for the glitter and the rouge. But their apathy turns out to be their greatest folly: And in a moment they were swept before the deluge.

Browne does hold out some hope for those who survive the deluge. Let the music keep our spirits high / Let the buildings keep our children dry / Let creation reveal its secrets by and by, by and by / When the light that’s lost within us reaches the sky.

Some of them were dreamers
And some of them were fools
Who were making plans and thinking of the future
With the energy of the innocent
They were gathering the tools
They would need to make their journey back to nature
While the sand slipped through the opening
And their hands reached for the golden ring
With their hearts they turned to each other's hearts for refuge
In the troubled years that came before the deluge

Some of them knew pleasure
And some of them knew pain
And for some of them it was only the moment that mattered
And on the brave and crazy wings of youth
They went flying around in the rain
And their feathers, once so fine, grew torn and tattered
And in the end they traded their tired wings
For the resignation that living brings
And exchanged love's bright and fragile glow
For the glitter and the rouge
And in a moment they were swept before the deluge

Let the music keep our spirits high
Let the buildings keep our children dry
Let creation reveal its secrets by and by, by and by
When the light that's lost within us reaches the sky

Some of them were angry
At the way the earth was abused
By the men who learned how to forge her beauty into power
And they struggled to protect her from them
Only to be confused
By the magnitude of her fury in the final hour
And when the sand was gone and the time arrived
In the naked dawn only a few survived
And in attempts to understand a thing so simple and so huge
Believed that they were meant to live after the deluge

Let the music keep our spirits high
Let the buildings keep our children dry
Let creation reveal it's secrets by and by, by and by
When the light that's lost within us reaches the sky