Week 71 // The Wind and the Hour

by Mount Everest

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about

So it turns out that by moving to Western Massachusetts last fall, I have returned to my ancestral homeland. My father grew up as a Southerner, but in actually his lineage can be traced to New England on his mother’s side, and the countryside out here is dotted with cemeteries filled with people that I am related to. They’ve been resting in these places for centuries now, and I recently decided to pay some of them a visit. Cemeteries are peaceful and reflective places, and this is a song about them. I looked at these old grave markers, chipping away over the years due to the relentless assault of time and nature, and I pondered who the people underneath them might have been. I pondered what --if anything beyond genetics-- these people had to do with me, or with my family as I know it. It turns out you can’t glean too much information from a gravestone. You’ve got a name, you’ve got a date or two, and if you are really lucky you might have a profession. The rest is up to imagination. As I stood there, I had a vision of some future descendant some hundreds of years from now standing over my grave and asking the same questions. I should be so lucky. I’m glad that I paid my family a visit, even if I don’t know them very well.

lyrics

I’ll be the break in the weather
Earth up and moving
Gone in a way

I’ll be the wind and the hour
Serious notions
Curious days

And the rest finally moving
Like a compulsion
Pulling away

Down in the ground of our fathers’ mothers
And fathers of mothers
We’d stay

Gone are all the easiest ways
Gone are the excuses to drift away

I got news for you brother
Cuz I’ve seen the future
And it’s coming our way

Yes, it’s a beautiful picture
It’s much like the season
It’s floating away

Out in the woods of our dearly departed
I found the answers
And stood on their grave

Down in the dirt where they’re resting
The Earth’s finally moving
And pulling away

Gone are all the easiest ways
Gone are the excuses to drift away

I’ll be the break in the weather
Serious notions
Curious days

And the rest finally moving
They’re much like the season
They’re floating away