Wednesday, March 18, 2009

 

'Water Grave'

"I want to show my Heavenly Father the man I used to be has finally died."

Daily. Hourly. With each breath.

--ER


Comments:
chirp chirp!
 
"Daily. Hourly. With each breath."

Not sure what that means, ER.
 
It means, as a Baptist preacher said, that the problem with livin' sacrifices is they tend to crawl off the altar.
 
Oh, and well, I meant it as a personal complement to the line I quoted from the song.
 
OK, I'll bite. Nice little song, very appropriate, and Biblical - all that dying and rising with Christ in baptism comes straight out of St. Paul (the man, not the city).
 
I was in high school when the Imperials (Russ Taff then lead singer) came out with this, and I LOVED it then, and still. It's been rattlin' around in my head the past few days.

Nothin' like a dose of Baptist-Pentecostal-tineged orthodoxy to turn off the comment faucet! :-)
 
I don't think it's that, ER. I think it's more that there just isn't anything to fight about here.

On the other hand, no one has said anything provocative or outlandish, either, sparking a digressive discursive diatribe (I do so love alliteration). Give it time, though. . .
 
"Now in my house
there's been a mercy killing.
The man I used to be has been crucified.
And the death of this man
was the final way of revealing,
In the spiritual way to live, I had to die.
Now if I let that dead man linger in me,
I might get a little idle in my way.
So I'm going down to the celebration river,
And take this dead man down
to a water grave
I'm goin' down to the river, my Lord.
I'm gonna be buried alive.
I want to show my Heavenly Father,
the man I use to be has finally died."

ER, I just don't know what to say.
Muddled might be one word.
Piss poor theology another thought.
Pretentious perhaps.
Blended metaphors.
Nostaligic Southern Pap.
Teenage girl angst and passion.
Sing-song-sincerity.
Mindless feel good without challenge jingle.

There, now you have something to respond to.
 
It's wasted on this pack of dogs ER, give up on them. Go back where you belong.
 
They are nothing more than dogs that will lick at your sores. You are above their company, you know that.
 
Wolf, Anon, wolf.
 
DrLoboJo: Naaah. It spoke to me then. Speaks to me now. And it's no more pretentious than your average preacher, and the average preacher is a pretentious.

So am I. So? :-)
 
Teenage girl angst and passion is the inchoate motivations of all metaphysics that seek to make our world and selves whole.

It's teenage boy herd mentality that's ruined our country. Playing with irrational drives that can eat up ethics.

It seems to me that DrLoboJo has been calling for a lot more "relationship centered" ethic that is the sine qua non of girlhood.
 
Back to romanticism and its prescriptions.
 
I really dug the Imps back in the day, I saw Russ Taff and the boys sing this song in concert once before they parted ways. Loved it back then. Still like it.

Is Dr L correct? Is it pap? Well, most (99.9%, according to some studies) of CCM was/is of a pap-ish nature and this may well be.

Still, Russ Taff has a powerful voice and I really like river imagery, so I still like it. So, nyaa. A little sentimental pablum is not always a bad thing. As long as it's not a basis for a way of thinking.
 
If you don't listen to the words, it's a good song.
 
Weird. I hear a confessional kind of hymn.
 
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