Fountain Of Sorrow
While I was in Amsterdam, the days got shorter in L.A.
I know it’s the way of the world, the shortest day of the year is only two months away, but it’s still a surprise, it still catches me off guard, especially in SoCal, when you leave the house for dinner and it’s dark and nippy you feel like there’s been a death in the world, that something’s been lost that can’t be regained.
Actually, we’ve been in the midst of a heat wave, with temperatures that would be summer anyplace else. But not today. Today it started off foggy, the sun peeked out for a bit, but now it’s gray, and driving home just now my mind hearkened back to Octobers past. And “Fountain Of Sorrow” started to play in my brain.
Funny how memories come back so vividly, even though they haven’t passed through your brain in decades. I mentally pictured that Sunday afternoon all those years back when I accompanied my sister to a party with her social work buddies.
Funny thing about older siblings. You always look up to them, their friends are always just a bit more cool. As were they. On this gray day in the foothills of Hollywood. It was just after “Late For The Sky” came out, the track they played on the radio was “Fountain Of Sorrow.”
Looking through some photographs I found inside a drawer
I was taken by a photograph of you
There were one or two I know that you would have liked a little more
But they didn’t show your spirit quite as true
A. Nobody likes most photographs of themselves.
B. Perfection is overrated. The pictures we adore are those that are somehow three-dimensional, where what’s inside the people photographed is evidenced. It’s not about beauty, but life.
“Fountain Of Sorrow” has got an upbeat groove, it’s not slow and heavy, unlike the opening, eponymous track of “Late For The Sky.” But there’s so much serious truth involved.
But when you see through love’s illusions, there lies the danger
And your perfect lover just looks like a perfect fool
So you go running off in search of a perfect stranger
While the loneliness seems to spring from your life
Like a fountain from a pool
That’s what we’re all trying to avoid. The loneliness. And when we climb the ladder of integration we forget about the abyss, we can only see up, not down, so we want to go higher, and we end up falling all the way back down.
Happens to everybody, especially when they’re young. This person’s pretty good, if only I could change this or that, but you can’t really change people, so you start dreaming of somebody better and you find someone who floats your boat, shows that gleam in their eye, and you jump ship, only to find what’s beneath the waterline is far from endearing, but at this point you can’t go back, you can never go back, because the person you’ve abandoned can never recover from what you did to them, they can never trust you again, and love is all about trust.
Now for you and me it may not be that hard to reach our dreams
But that magic feeling never seems to last
That line has always bugged me. I’ve never found life easy, never found that things work out. It’s been a perpetual struggle. But as for that magic feeling not lasting…ain’t that the truth. You reach the pinnacle, but the euphoria ultimately evaporates. No one can be famous 24/7, no one can be on top of the charts all year, the initial rush of love fades. It’s the nature of existence. We’ve always got to keep moving, because the stagnant position ultimately feels worse and worse.
And while the future’s there for anyone to change, still you know it seems
It’d be easier sometimes to change the past
That’s what the youth don’t know. How hard it is to accomplish your dreams, contrary to what Jackson says above. It’s hard enough to start in Little League, never mind become a movie director or win an election. The world is your oyster and then it’s not, I’ve always been worried opportunity is going to disappear, which is why I never had kids, didn’t want to get married, owe no money, I want no obligations, I want to be able to turn on a dime and grab hold of the rope that leads me somewhere better, the so-called opportunity of a lifetime. And the truth is you make your own opportunities, but most get entrenched in obligations, go down the path of security and then it becomes impossible to make your way back. Oh, you can abandon everything and you’ll end up with freedom, but truly you’ll be starting over, at the bottom, and it won’t be long until you want your old life back, because none of us really want to go back, we might have lines in our faces and squandered chances, but high school really wasn’t that good and it makes no difference if your skin is baby smooth if you’re inexperienced and unwise.
I’m just one or two years and a couple of changes behind you
In my lessons at love’s pain and heartache school
My favorite line in the song, one of my favorite lyrics ever. I quote it all the time. You realize someone’s more experienced, you’re at the beginning, they’re in the middle or at the end. You’re behind them. Not that this is always bad, but life is about feeling inadequate until you finally realize we all are…insecure, searching for answers, wondering how we fit in.
As for love… I think I’m gonna die with so many questions unanswered. You always think life is in front of you, that you can make adjustments, until you wake up one day and you realize there’s less time left in the top half of the hourglass than the bottom, and you’d better be wide awake or what’s still left will pass you by.
You’ve had to hide sometimes, but now you’re all right
And it’s good to see your smiling face tonight
I smile now. There were years when I didn’t. Most of the nineties, a positively lost decade that I’ll never get back.
And the older you get the less you remember. When you’re young your whole life lies in relief, you don’t have to throw anything out to make room, but as you age you realize life is a continuum, no different whether you lived in 1813 or 2013. Life, love and happiness, that’s what everybody’s searching for.
And when I hear that downbeat and fall into that groove I feel I belong, to the great continuum of rock and roll, it’s what keeps us baby boomers together. It’s not the same for kids. Oh, there’s still music, but it’s not as meaningful. But we grew up with few other distractions. The best and the brightest played. And boosted by the youthquake of the sixties it was not about money so much as fulfillment, questions rather than answers. And that’s the conundrum facing the aged. They like what they’ve achieved, but they still have their dreams, which are too often out of reach everywhere but in their minds.
So they put on the old records and are awash in who they once were, wondering how this many years later they can still feel lonely, sometimes only the music can make them feel complete.
If you feel too free and you need something to remind you
There’s this loneliness springing up from your life
Like a fountain from a pool
