I went to bed this morning sometime after ten, after sharing something very special to me with someone very special to me. It may seem silly to some, but it was just a concert dvd. It is special to me for two important reasons. One, the artist is Peter Gabriel. I can’t begin to explain the respect and sheer love I have for the man and his music. His gifts have provided me with comfort when there was nothing else. His words have turned my head around when I thought that I was stilled. From his days in Genesis, to the present day solo career, he has never failed to cast an awe on me that has me referring to him…as do his many devote followers…as Saint Peter. The other reason is, that this tour…from 1995...the Secret World Tour…is the last tour that I saw him in person. It is hands down the very best show I have ever seen. And the memory of it, without the dvd, is still strong in my mind.
Once in bed, I laid with a nagging feeling in my system. I tried very hard to ignore it and allow myself to sleep. It just didn’t want to let go. I picked up a book and did my best to occupy my mind with thoughts other than the feeling that something was missing in my understanding. I finally drifted off and slept a deep sleep. For about five hours.
And then it woke me up.
I understand the concept of déjà vu. It is the idea that we find ourselves experiencing a moment and feeling as if we have been there before…in the exact same moment…in the exact same place…with the exact same people…feeling the exact same thing. It happens to all of us. It’s one of those “raise the hair on the back of my neck” kind of things. It unnerves us when it happens, mostly because it almost feels like a ghost coming out of the past to take another swipe at us. We desperately try to tie the moments together. Did we do anything differently? If so, why? Was the outcome different? We rarely get beyond the curious stage. I believe it’s another example of our minds keeping from us things that would just freak us out.
But, what woke me today was something a little different. Is it possible to have déjà vu in reverse? What I mean, is it possible to experience a moment for the first time and get the feeling that it is going to come back to us later, in a similar situation…and be a meaningful experience? I am thinking it’s possible. I am thinking that it may have happened to me.
I remember very clearly going to that concert. Peter was in Philly for two nights. I went both nights. The first night with some close friends. The second night with some die hard fans like myself that I had met in different places, at different times of my life. Both nights are burned into my brain. I remember sitting there unable to take my eyes off the performance. Feeling every word of the lyrics being poured to me as if it were the first time I had heard them. Of course, it wasn’t. Even the new stuff was stored in my memories banks from repeated plays of the current cd. But, there was something about watching that show. I remember leaving the Spectrum both nights thinking that I would never forget what I had seen that weekend. It wasn’t the first time I had seen him perform. But, it was the best I had ever seen him do it. And the music…every part of it…touched my soul in ways I can’t explain. It was two nights in a moment.
Sitting on the couch this morning watching the dvd of the same tour in an Italian city, the reverse déjà vu crept in a bit. The music took me back to those nights in the crowd. That feeling that I was watching and listening to something special, something that would mean so much to me for a very long time, crept back into my brain and nested there. Once the show was over, my guest headed home and I headed to bed. Waking me up was the hatching of the eggs in the nest. The realization of the nagging thoughts exploded into my mind and explained themselves. It was the lyrics. All of them. I sat, fifteen years ago, and watched this man perform lyrics that would explain so much about my present day. And that hair raising feeling took hold.
The show begins with a song called; “Come Talk to Me”.
“I can imagine the moment, breaking out of the silence, all the things that we both might say. And the heart, it will not be denied, til we’re both on the same damn side. All the barriers blown away. I said; please talk to me.”
Have you ever found yourself in a position where you have said all you can say to explain yourself and you are waiting for the return? You just want to hear the heart of someone who means so much. And you know they are scared. You know they are worried about so many things. But, the frustration of seeing them hold on to their true voice because of self created barriers is just maddening. It causes a person to doubt their worth. It causes them to doubt what they see at times. They believe what they feel, the believe that the other person feels it, too. They just know that the unspoken words are tearing into both and all you want to do is be standing there when the flood gates open.
“Steam” is a song that I have found most people don’t understand. It’s a more fast paced song then most of what is normal for Peter…more pop oriented. The lyrics seem strange. He is discussing the attributes of someone…presumed to be a woman…that he is trying desperately to connect with. He is telling her all he knows about her, but little of it is in depth. In the chorus, he says that he needs steam. Steam in this moment is two things…one is heat…the other is the mist, as in a dream, that hides the truth from him.
“Oh yeah, I need steam. Feel the steam around me now. Ah, you’re turning up the heat. I start to dream aloud. See you move your hands and feet. Won’t you step into this cloud of steam. This steam. Give me steam, and how you feel can make it real. Real as anything you’ve seen. Get a life, with this dreamer’s dream.”
He is imploring her to come into the moment with him…into the fog of his dream to make it real.
Peter has used religious images in his songs many times. The early Genesis stuff is covered with it. There are two specific moments of that here. One is a song called, “Blood of Eden”. This song uses the complexity of the first couple to express his own frustrations with life and just how tough it is to hold onto all that means so much.
“At my request, you take me in. In that tenderness, I am floating away. No certainty, nothing to rely on. Holding still, for a moment. What a moment this is. Oh, for a moment of forgetting. A moment of bliss. Heyyyyy. I can hear the distant thunder of a million unheard souls. A million unheard souls. Watch each one reach for creature comforts. For the filling of their holes. In the blood of Eden lie the woman and the man. With the man in the woman and the woman in the man. In the blood of Eden, we wanted the union. Ohh, the union of the woman, the woman and the man.”
This songs is soft, aching in it’s longing for what it knows should be, could be in their “union”. The “unheard souls” is the reference to all those that would come from this first marriage. Their responsibility to all they know seems immense. I know that it may seem to be too much to say that this concept can reflect a situation in the present day. But, I would say that would shortchange our understanding of what we are capable of feeling. If you are in love…if you find yourself completely captured by another…isn’t the responsibility of all that could come a large weight? To think that we can remove the chance for greatness with a slip of the tongue, a stupid act of selfishness, or just a non-action is an awesome responsibility. In a moment, we can take the wrong fruit and banish ourselves from the beauty of the garden we have been lucky to find ourselves in. If only we would have listened to our heart, to our soul, and not thought so much.
The second religious reference in the show comes from a song called “Solsbury Hill”. A song that is in the top five of all time favorites for me. It’s the message that gets me. It’s the meaning behind them that keeps me coming back. They are words that can find you at any point in your life and return you to where you need to be.
“When illusion spins her net, I’m never where I want to be. And liberty, she pirouettes when I think that I am free. Watch my empty silhouettes, who close their eyes but still can see. No one taught them etiquette. I will show another me. Today I don’t need a replacement. I’ll show them what the smile on my face meant. My heart going boom, boom, boom. Hey, I said, you can keep my things, He’s come to take me home”
The “He” here is obviously God. Home, is generally thought to be heaven. I disagree. I believe that “home” is this context is referring to a place of peace. A place of well being. The singer speaks of the ridicule he feared and received for what he believes. In this song, you assume it’s his faith that is being judged. But, the listener…at any moment in his or her life, can make it about what they are carrying. We have all been in situations where the opinions and expressions of others on something that is so important to us can be as hurtful as anything we experience. Even for those of us that normally put little weight in the opinions of others find it hard when what we love so much is attacked or even not recognized. I have fought through a lot of these feelings recently. I have allowed them to create doubts in me. I have allowed them to make me act differently and treat others differently. Those are the days that I forget this message. A message I should probably hear every day.
It’s at this time during our viewing this morning that I started to feel the nagging feeling that I was experiencing this reverse déjà vu moment. I laid on the couch sensing, with the subtleness of a lead pipe to the head, this feeling that something important was happening right in front of me…and it was happening right in front of her. I am not sure she noticed. I know that she is aware of just how special this music is to me. But, I don’t know if she sensed that I have experiencing something pretty profound and didn’t really know how to explain. The dvd continued.
“Washing of the Water” is a song that describes a man desperately trying to right his life. He feels lost in a sea of experiences that have left him feeling completely out of control. Not knowing where to turn. And unable to acquire any kind of footing to right himself. He knows that the water doesn’t really want to hurt him, but his inability to control it has him spinning out of control. He senses that he needs to jettison his past in order to move forward. He feels the weight of the voices in his head that have held him down for so long trying desperately to keep him from his true self, his true happiness.
“Letting go, it’s so hard now to get this love untied. So tough to stay with this thing, ‘cause if I follow through, I face what I denied. I get those hooks out of me and I take out the hooks that I sunk deep into your side. Kill that fear of emptiness, loneliness I hide. River, oh river, river running deep. Bring me something that will let me go to sleep. In the washing of the water will you take it all away? Bring me something to take this pain away.”
The pain referred to here isn’t exactly clear. I want to believe it’s the pain of the destruction his past has caused him. The pain of holding on to meaningless feelings and thoughts that no longer have purpose because he felt it was all he had. He holds on tight to the source with “the hooks I sunk deep into your side”, as an anchor to where he believed he not only began, but ended. He realizes that the only way to wash away all that dirties him is to let the hooks go and allow the source to float away in the current of life that is a natural tonic for healing our heart.
That brings us to the closing numbers. The first, “Secret World”, is a cry for equal care in a situation where the singer feels as if he is alone in his effort to carry the weight of the all that means so much to him. He knows they have closets that they hide their hearts in. He has shown his, but feels he is still being denied an understanding of what he thinks he sees. The “Secret World” he refers to is the accumulation of the “luggage” of our lives that we hide the more tender parts of ourselves in, to keep them safe. The problem is that in doing so, we allow them to waste away and if they are not seen…not used…they can be forgotten.
“In this house of make believe, divided in two like Adam and Eve. You put out and I receive. Down by the railway siding, in our secret world we were colliding, with all the places we were hiding love. What was it we were thinking of? Oh, the wheel is turning, spinning round and round. And the house is crumbling, but the stairways sound. With no guilt, no shame, no sorrow, no pain. Whatever it is, we are all the same. Making it up in our secret world. Shaking it up. Breaking it up. Making it up, in our secret world.”
His frustration and anger explodes in the end of the song, telling her that he fears that he has seen things that were not there. The truth is, they were there. But, the luggage kept them locked away. Brief glimpses past the lids held him in place. He is telling her he needs more than just a glimpse.
The show ends with, what is in my opinion, the greatest love song known to man. “In your Eyes” is an explosion of emotion…a joyous celebration of love felt, of love given, of love returned. The singer has reached a moment of complete release of all that has held him back. He has discarded all that has hindered him and is telling the world not only of his love, but the depth of it…the completeness of it. He is coming clean for the first time in his life with, not only for himself, but for anyone that will listen.
“Love, I get so lost sometimes. Days past and this emptiness fills my heart. When I want to run away, I drive off in my car, but whichever way I go, I come back to the place you are. And all my instincts, well they return. And the grande façade, so soon will burn. Without noise. Without my pride, I reach out from the inside. In your eyes, the light, the heat. In your eyes, I am complete. In your eyes, I see the doorway to a thousand churches, your eyes, the resolution of all the fruitless searches. In your eyes, I see the light, the heat, In your eyes, oh, I want to be that complete. I want to touch the heat I see in your eyes.”
I am truly not sure that it gets better than that. I don’t know what else there is to say to anyone to show them what they mean to you. The fact that this is the last song of the show is not an accident of set list. Peter is using this expression of joy to show that through all that he has expressed already…all of the ugliness he has seen…all of the frustration that he has endured….he comes out the other side so completely in love that he compares it to finding “the doorway to a thousand churches”. He is willing to remove the mask that he has lived with forever and show his real self…his real heart. Unashamed. Unwavering in his commitment.
Waking up this afternoon with the realization that what occurred to me 15 years ago was a moment of preview. At the time, I was just out of my first marriage…a mistake that haunted me for a very long time. I was bitter and angry with God and the world. I was sober. But, I was not as humble as my sober brothers and sisters would have liked. I remember sitting through that second night of shows feeling this tapping on my heart…as if it were trying to tell me that I needed not only to listen, not only to hear, but to feel what I was experiencing in this crowded auditorium. Take in every word. Because they were important. Because there was a message there.
I felt the understanding of that tapping this morning. Sitting with an amazing friend, I realized that the words were coming back to me, tapping me…asking me if I remembered that they told me I would be here. I am here. I am standing at the end of the show, all my luggage out…all the washing done, I have turned in the things I no longer need and I am finding peace. I have talked to her and she has talked to me. And I have seen her heart. And because of that, I stand here…screaming to the world…that I get it now. Why it was so important for me to show this to her. Because, I stand here now…telling all…she is here. And in her, I see all that I am. All that I want to be. And all that we can be. I see that this life of looking for peace of mind, heart, and soul is over.
Peter, thank you. For the music. For the talent. And for the tapping on an old, bitter heart in Philly, 15 years ago.
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