Jai guru deva om in Well now

It’s a beautiful song. I’ve known it nearly all my life and it moves me in ways I can neither understand nor articulate. Yet every time I hear it, it stirs in me both these inexplicable emotions and the need to understand them, to know what the poetry in the words meant then to the now dead writer, now to me.

It is so strange for me to be moved like this by a song. Despite my educational background, poetry is often completely lost on me. Appreciated perhaps in the imagery and clever synchrony of the words, but often so under-realized in meaning. Though people seem to think me wise and learned in such things, I feel inadequate to even pretend authority. (What, six, maybe eight, college level courses in literature were all that separated me from the pupils to whom I once committed the felony of teaching English.)

I usually just let poetry wash over me. It means what it says - or not. If it isn’t clear, it isn’t meant to be, so interpret it to your own need or let it go.

But…

Nothing’s going to change my world.
Nothing’s going to change my world?
That refrain has always disturbed me. It sets off the same inner debate every time.

Incredible poetry in the images laced on top of music.
Music that is hard for me to categorize -
Calm? Bittersweet? Accepting? Sad?

What I glean. most poorly, is perhaps a notion that Lennon was experiencing a feeling of being part of life bigger than a single person, a small part of an infinite universe. He feels that he is moved upon and moved by greater things, things beyond his comprehension, but he is content to simply experience and accept it all, see the beauty in the things around him that he can see, can experience, because it is all a part of a bigger all.

(See, I can’t do it. I can’t wrap my mind intelligently around his meaning.
Can’t even sound bright attempting it.)

Then there’s the troublesome refrain.
Nothing’s going to change my world.
Is that acceptance?
Nothing’s going to change my world and I’m just fine with that, with the beauty of all that I can know, all that I can experience.
Or is it a wish for more?
Is it a bittersweet statement that the questions are beyond him,
that he has to accept what he cannot change
but, oh, he wants to expand, to know it all, to know everything,
to embrace the meanings of which he has only an inkling
in his small unchanging world?

The song makes my head hurt sometimes.

And I look at my small piece of the universe:
At my house - chaos inside and out, faulty foundations and electrical system in need of complete replacement, air conditioners constantly in need of repair, trees just waiting to topple upon it, termites looking to munch it, plumbing asking when it will be most inconvenient to burst, tenant deservedly requesting repair as piece after piece fails -
At my livelihood - Increasingly difficult from a long-forgotten starting point of impossible, full of unmeetable deadlines and vomit and people angry at me for simply attempting to do my job, my every morning dread at forcing myself out of an uncomfortable sleep life to go to an more uncomfortable waking life but I must, I must, no safety net, I must sell my time cheap and badly or embrace true disaster.
At my own body - Constantly and rapidly becoming more broken and painful, drug dependent and diminished.
At my outlook - Getting smaller and darker.

My universe is so small and unbeautiful, frightening and filled with foreboding.

But the song is beautiful and it moves me every time.
It plays as I pull out the colourful scraps of paper on which I waste other colourful scraps of paper once a week.
I click the links.
I type in my numbers at the lottery site.

Nothing’s going to change my world.

Please.
I hit enter.
Change my world.

Last updated October 20, 2015