The Indigo Girls wrote and performed a song titled Closer to Fine in the 1980’s. I loved it then and now. There is a line from the song that has always had significance for me.
Given the news that Dame Helen Mirren will be playing the role of Sarah Winchester in the aptly titled film by the same last name, I sat down oddly aware and weakened simultaneously. The only reason I can ascertain for the feeling is subject to a divergent post modern theme to which I would rather avoid for the most part at this juncture circa 2016.
Back to the Indigo Girls.
“Closer To Fine”
I’m trying to tell you something about my life
Maybe give me insight between black and white
The best thing you’ve ever done for me
Is to help me take my life less seriously, it’s only life after all
Well darkness has a hunger that’s insatiable
And lightness has a call that’s hard to hear
I wrap my fear around me like a blanket
I sailed my ship of safety till I sank it, I’m crawling on your shore.
I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
There’s more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine.
I went to see the doctor of philosophy
With a poster of Rasputin and a beard down to his knee
He never did marry or see a B-grade movie
He graded my performance, he said he could see through me
I spent four years prostrate to the higher mind, got my paper
And I was free.
I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
There’s more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine.
I stopped by the bar at 3 a.m.
To seek solace in a bottle or possibly a friend
I woke up with a headache like my head against a board
Twice as cloudy as I’d been the night before
I went in seeking clarity.
I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
There’s more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine.
I went to the doctor, I went to the mountains
I looked to the children, I drank from the fountain
There’s more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine.
We go to the bible, we go through the workout
We read up on revival and we stand up for the lookout
There’s more than one answer to these questions
pointing me in a crooked line
The less I seek my source for some definitive
The closer I am to fine
The closer I am to fine
The closer I am to fine.
The song above is to me, on par with U2’s Where the streets have no name. NEITHER song is the wrong choice on ANY given day because with both, ontology is subject to teleology. And isn’t that a lesson that I never questioned or predicated with the post modern “For whom?”….
If any curious passer by happens upon a crisis, a conspiracy or what’s left of a corpse and a corpus and bothers to ask questions, someone remind my betters that “crawling on strange shores” so to speak was more and less than anyone knew.
The innocent and the guilty do know who they are.
Period.
Ashley M Heidi Carter 