I am listening to an album I played over and over when it came out in 1969: It’s a Beautiful Day. David LaFlamme’s wonderful voice and sublime violin playing still move me. Two songs in particular, White Bird and Time Is, have stayed with me all these years.
Back then, I was searching for meaning. Listening again now, I realise that these songs were expressing something I felt deeply, even if I could not have put it into words. Perhaps that is why I remember them so well.
“White bird, in a golden cage.”
That image says so much. Why should a creature with wings spend its life behind bars? And does it make any difference to the bird that the bars are gold?
Our own cages can be harder to recognise. They may be made of expectations we have accepted, fears we have grown accustomed to, or habits we rarely question. We can become so familiar with the boundaries of our lives that we forget to ask whether they allow us to flourish.
Of course, some restrictions are real and beyond our control. Yet even within the circumstances we cannot change, there may be something in us still longing for expression: curiosity, affection, creativity, the simple joy of being alive.
I think that longing was part of what I heard in White Bird all those years ago.
Then there is Time Is, and its reflection on how differently we experience time according to what we feel. Anyone who has waited anxiously, grieved, or wished a happy afternoon would never end knows something of this.
But it is the thought introduced by “But for those who love” that especially touches me. The song opens towards eternity. I hear in that something about the fullness of a moment when we feel love. We are glad to be here. There is something precious about being alive, and we can feel it.
More than fifty years have passed since I first listened to these songs. That is a strange thing to consider while hearing music that remains so familiar. I recognise the young man who listened then, with his questions and his longing, although I now bring a lifetime of experience to the music.
I am still listening, still discovering what it means to me.
Recently, a friend chose these words to describe herself:
“Ich liebe das Leben, weil ich darin auftreten darf.”
I love life because I get to appear in it.
There is something wonderfully playful about that thought. We have a part in life, a chance to step onto the stage, to discover what we can bring to it—and to enjoy being here.
Perhaps that is what draws these songs together for me now: the bird’s longing to spread its wings, and the love that makes our time precious.
In 1969, I was searching for meaning. Today, listening again, I feel grateful that I am here to experience it.
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