Fly These Wings' "Maybe I'm"

A couple days ago, I listened to Fly These Wings' "Maybe I'm."  Like I mentioned a couple months ago, Fly These Wings was a band my cousin was in a year or two ago, so this post is mostly just for my own reference (although there is a video for the song).

I'd previously noticed the phrase "daily bread," and I was pretty sure that this was a reference to the Lord's Prayer and the Sermon on the Mount: "Give us this day our daily bread" (Matthew 6:11).  Listening to it a couple days ago, I noticed the phrase, "for the least of these," which I also found in Ivan & Alyosha's "Drifting Away" a month ago (and wrote about for this project).  Matthew 25 talks about when the King will come again.  He will say to the blessed, "As you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me" (Matthew 25:40), but He will say to the cursed, "As you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me" (Matthew 25:45).

When I first noticed the "daily bread" phrase, I was wondering if it was intended as a Biblical reference because it seems that "daily bread" has also just become a common phrase.  But since I found "the least of these," which is also from the Bible, I'm more confident that both are intentional Biblical references.

Stephen Stills' "Feed the People"

This morning I listened to Stephen Stills' Man Alive!, and I noticed a Biblical reference in "Feed the People."  There's the recurring line "Turn your swords to plowshares everywhere and feed the people."  Coincidentally, two days before I listened to the album, I read Isaiah 2, where Isaiah writes, "He [God] shall judge between the nations, and shall decide disputes for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war anymore" (Isaiah 2:4).  While Stills' song is primarily concerned with feeding people, through that Biblical reference, which - in its original context - is more about turning away from war, it also advocates pacifism.

Wilco's Kicking Television: Live in Chicago

Last night I listened to Wilco's Kicking Television: Live in Chicago, and I noticed something about the lyrics in two songs.

"Misunderstood"

This song is also on Being There, but when I listened to it earlier this year I guess I didn't pay attention to the line "Short on long-term goals."  Because of the opposition between "short" and "long," there's a sense of incongruity that emphasizes the aimlessness and confusion of not having goals.

"Airline to Heaven"

Originally, this is a song from Mermaid Avenue Vol. II (which I have but haven't listened to yet) with lyrics by Woody Guthrie.  I haven't listened to this version that often, but I hadn't noticed until now that "Them's got ears let them hear / Them's got eyes let them see" is a quote from the Bible.  I had to look up where it is specifically and actually found two instances: "He who has ears to hear, let him hear" - Matthew 11:15 and "And he [Jesus] said, 'He who has ears to hear, let him hear'" - Mark 4:9.  I think it's interesting that Guthrie pluralized it ("them" instead of "he").  It seems that he also extended the Biblical "ears to hear" to "eyes to see."

The Guess Who's "Hang on to Your Life"

Earlier, I listened to The Best of the Guess Who and the spoken part at the end of "Hang on to Your Life" sounded sort of familiar to me:

They gaped upon me with their mouths
As a ravening and a roaring lion
I am poured out like water
And all my bones are out of joint
My heart is like wax
It is melted in the midst of my bowels
My strength is dried up like a potsherd
And my tongue cleaveth to my jaws
And thou hast brought me into the dust of death

I had to do some research, but I eventually found the source.  Translations may differ, but it's Psalm 22:13-15.

Bach: Es ist Heil uns kommen her, BWV 9

This morning I listened to an-other Bach cantata (I've been listening to one a day since 1 February, and I'll be doing that until early August).  This time it was Es ist Heil uns kommen her, BWV 9.  In the second movement, I heard the word "Spiegel," which is German for mirror.  Because of that, I thought I knew the Biblical text used, but first I lookt up the notation so I could see the rest of the text for that section:

(notation found here)

It's not the best translation, but I translated

Wir sollten in Gesetze geh'n
Und dort als wie in einem Spiegel seh'n
Wie unsere Natur unartig sei
Und dennoch bleiben wir dabei

as

We were supposed to go into the laws
And there as in a mirror see
How our nature be ill-behaved
And nevertheless we stay with it

This wasn't the text I was expecting after I heard that "mirror."  I'd thought I would find the text from 1 Corinthians 13:12 - "For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face.  Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known."

To some degree, both texts have the same contrasting ideas of seeing perfectly and seeing imperfectly.  In the cantata, there's the perfect seeing of sinful nature through the law (what "We were supposed to... see") and the imperfect seeing involved with "nevertheless we stay with it."  It's the same notion as turning a blind eye.  In the 1 Corinthians text, there's perfect seeing in knowing God "face to face" and imperfect seeing of knowing Him only partly.

So while this Bach cantata doesn't use that 1 Corinthians text, by using the same image of a mirror, it seems to hint at it.

Bach: Christ lag in Todes Banden, BWV 4

This morning I listened to Bach's Christ lag in Todes Banden, BWV 4.  I noticed that at the word "nichts" ("nothing") in the fourth movement, the instruments drop out, but - after this feature seemed familiar - I did some research and discovered that I actually made a note of that when I listened to this cantata last summer.  I still intended to write about it (on a different blog) this afternoon, so I lookt up the notation, but then I found something else.

Leading up to that "nichts," there are double, triple, and quadruple stops in the violin part:

(notation found here)

Purely as a musical feature, those multiple stops set up a contrast with the rests after "nichts," but I think there's also an extra-musical intent.  The text for this movement includes:

Jesus Christus, Gottes Sohn, an unser Statt ist kommen,
Und hat die Sünde weggethan, damit dem Tod genommen
All' sein Recht und sein' Gewalt,
Da bleibet nichts denn Tod'sgestalt,
Den Stach’l hat er verloren.

Which I've translated as:

Jesus Christ, God's Son, has come in our stead
And has put away sin and with it taken death
All its [death's] authority and its power
There remains nothing because death
Has lost its sting.

The Biblical text is from 1 Corinthians 15:

When the perishable puts on the imperishable, and the mortal puts on immortality, then shall come to pass the saying that is written:  "Death is swallowed up in victory."  "O death, where is your victory?  O death, where is your sting?"  The sting of death is sin, and the power of sin is the law.  But thanks be to God, who gives us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ.  (1 Corinthians 15:54-57)

After "sein' Gewalt" ("its power") the triple and quadruple stops occur, as if to demonstrate that power, and then they're absent once "da bleibet nichts" ("there remains nothing").

"Gewalt" can also be translated as "violence," which those triple and quadruple stops could also represent.

Don McLean's "Everybody Loves Me, Baby"

An-other thing I noticed while listening to American Pie this morning is the Biblical references in "Everybody Loves Me, Baby."  I think I'd noticed "Yes, and the ocean parts when I walk through" before, but "The Angels guide my every tread" was new to me.

At first, I was just going to write a post about, "Hey, there are Biblical references," but then I got thinking about them some more and realized that neither of those Biblical references are strictly correct.

McLean's song has "The Angels guide my every tread," but in the Bible, it's "For he will command his angels concerning you to guard you in all your ways.  On their hands they will bear you up, lest you strike your foot against a stone" (Psalm 91:11-12).  The same slight error is present in "the ocean parts when I walk through."  In Exodus, it's the Red Sea that parts, not an ocean:  "Then Moses stretched out his hand over the sea, and the LORD drove the sea back by a strong east wind all night and made the sea dry land, and the waters were divided" (Exodus 14:21)

I think both of these speak to the hubris of the singer/speaker of the song.  He's trying to impress a girl, so he exaggerates these things.  It's not merely that the angels guard him; they guide him.  And he doesn't have just a sea parted for him; he parts the ocean himself.