“All songs”

The name of this blog, “all songs lead back t’ the sea” , is a Bob Dylan quote. It’s from the eighth of Dylan’s “11 Outlined Epitaphs” (first published as liner notes to the disc, The Times They Are A-Changin’).

The “sea” is the source of all songs. Likewise, “all songs lead back t’ the sea” (from whence they came).

I invite you to decide for yourself what “the sea” represents. The sea is often invoked as a metaphor for God. Or it may be a symbol for life, given that all life emerged originally from the sea.

But perhaps the sea in this usage is a symbol of infinite nothingness. Certain religions affirm that all things emerge from an infinite void and ultimately return to that void.

(Depressing? Maybe; maybe not.)

“Songs” are truth, to the extent that any human messenger is able to grasp it. And we do grasp truth — intermittently and partially.

(We know only in part, as St. Paul once said. It’s very important to remember that humbling fact:  i.e., not to suppose that our minuscule insight is Ultimate Truth, and the entirety of it.)

When we do grasp truth — however imperfectly — it is only because, somehow, we have been in communion with the sea. The sea is the source/inspiration of all songs.

Songs come from the sea; and point us always back to the sea:  obscured by mist and foam, its depths impenetrable — infinitely mysterious.