(Given the subject matter of this song and given that my parents just left from a weekend visit to my town, this might be taken as some kind of commentary on our relationship. But FEAR NOT, PARENTS. It is not.)
Here's why my parents shouldn't worry: I like this song because it doesn't reflect on my life in the slightest.
These past two weeks I have had somewhat of an excess of soul, soulfulness if you will, and have been actively trying not to let my thoughts turn to the subjects of love and romance.
The problem is this is nearly impossible to balance with a habit of pop music.
This song was originally written by Cat Stevens as part of a conceived musical called Revolussia (please believe me; I can't make this stuff up) to describe an argument between a father and a son wherein the son wants to go to fight in the Russian revolution and the father tries to convince him to stay.
The musical never got off the ground but this song was released as a single in the early days of Cat Stevens' fame, with him singing both parts of the duet and (I personally think) doing so with COMPLETE mastery.
But when you listen to the song you don't know that it is a duet until Stevens comes in on the second verse and the guitar picks up sharply; this moment gets me, has always gotten me, and has nothing to do with my own personal problems of love.
Pop music encourages the listener to turn inward. This can be productive. But occasionally turning inward leads to nothing but trouble, to obsession, and that's when -- I now realize, somewhat -- it's time to turn outward, to the things in this world that are beautiful and interesting and compelling and that are NOT you or anyone you will ever know.
The song: Cat Stevens, "Father and Son"; 1970
The moment: 1:25
I am going to hand things over to YouTube commenter LeadMineGal to take us out:
That's all it's ever really about, isn't it?
Yrs,
AW