Count Your Blessings #32 – Song lyrics that paint a picture

I love song lyrics that paint a picture. I think it’s because I love to imagine and lyrics in songs, like poetry, build that picture in a minimalist way that lets me imagine all of the rest.

Sometimes I imagine by picturing a real place or places that I have been to, blending them together into a collage of memories. Sometimes I imagine a blank canvass and literally paint on it, but unlike my physical efforts these pictures are wonderful. Sometimes, every so often, I fill in the picture with my own words.

I am the type of person who can so often fill my imagination with problems that become disasters. I know how things can get worse and hence that’s what I imagine. The great thing about participating in someone else’s picture is that they imagine good things and great times. I know it’s not good to spend an entire life focusing on the negative, so to have a positive to focus on is great and it always makes me feel uplifted way beyond the end of the song. It’s a blessing.

Here are some of my favourites:

Sunset is an angel weeping
Holding out a bloody sword
No matter how I squint I cannot
Make out what it’s pointing toward
Sometimes you feel like you live too long
Days drip slowly on the page
You catch yourself
Pacing the cage

Bruce Cockburn – Pacing the Cage

I’m sipping Flor De Caa and lime juice, it’s three a.m.
Blow a fruit fly off the rim of my glass
The radio’s playing Superchunk and the friends of Dean Martinez

Midnight it was bike tires whacking the pot holes
Milling humans’ shivering energy glow
Fusing the space between them with bar-throb bass and laughter

If this were the last night of the world
What would I do?
What would I do that was different
Unless it was champagne with you?

Bruce Cockburn – Last Night of the World

Lenny Bruce is dead but he didn’t commit any crime
He just had the insight to rip off the lid before its time.
I rode with him in a taxi once, only for a mile and a half,
Seemed like it took a couple of months.
Lenny Bruce moved on and like the ones that killed him, gone.

Bob Dylan – Lenny Bruce

GOD, my shepherd! I don’t need a thing.You have bedded me down in lush meadows, you find me quiet pools to drink from.True to your word, you let me catch my breath and send me in the right direction.

Even when the way goes through Death Valley, I’m not afraid when you walk at my side. Your trusty shepherd’s crook makes me feel secure.

You serve me a six-course dinner right in front of my enemies. You revive my drooping head; my cup brims with blessing.

Your beauty and love chase after me every day of my life. I’m back home in the house of GOD for the rest of my life.

Psalm 23