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The Right Place: A Story
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Notes: As we were recording this project I was looking for the right way to put the songs we had together. I had a nagging feeling that there was a common theme that I was missing. One night it came to me all at once, and I knew not only what tied the songs together, but in fact a whole story had coalesced in my mind. What emerged was a song cycle, with the singer's voice as the main protagonist, and a story about faith, love, and redemption, about honestly facing one's own failings, and about second chances. My written version of the story follows. This was not what Joe had in mind when he wrote these songs, it is only my interpretation. I hope you enjoy, and that the songs touch you as they have me. -Paul Rosenberg |
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Late afternoon, early Fall, clear and crisp and still sunny. Two people walk together down a country road…
As they walked along together she could see the unseen weight that lay upon him. It had been there from the start, yet she knew not from where it came. He remained silent.
She looked closely at the man whom she now called her partner, her own love. What was this burden that kept him low, that stood as an invisible barrier between them? She had to know, for this could not go on. On this day, as they walked along together, she reached a stopping point, a break, and she could go no further without the truth.
She swung around to face him, and there they stopped.
“Please,” she said, “please talk to me.” “I talk to you all the time!” came his reply. “No. I don’t mean just any talk. I want more now, and I must have it before we go on. You carry a heavy load, my friend, I can see it now and I have seen it always. And now I need you to tell me what weighs so upon you, what keeps you so low in spite of all the good we have.”
She looked him in the eye, expectantly, and waited.
There was a long pause.
He had always known this day would come. His silence about his past was matched only by his faith in his future, his confidence that he had truly been saved.
But now he had to choose: could he tell her the truth now, could he reveal the past without losing his savior?
He took a deep breath, and smiled gently at her.
“I was an outlaw in my past life….”
She stood in silence, trying to put it all together in her head. Her man had been a crook, a thief in some distant past she never knew of until now. Then he had been a father…
“You were married? You have children?,” she exclaimed. “Yes,” he said. “But my marriage did not last long. I had given up my thieving days, I lived as an honest man, but I had not really changed. Our marriage was doomed from the start, but I remained oblivious.” “Did she leave you?” “Yes, she did, and took the kids. There were signs everywhere, but I liked to drink. I could not see very well, you know.”
Here was the story she had waited for so long to hear. It came as no surprise really, nor a shock, but rather more like a relief. It seemed to relive him too in some way, and she could almost see the weight slowly lifting like heavy clouds that break up and away after a storm.
“After she was gone I pretty much crashed,” he said. “I had more anger than I could admit or allow. I had to be alone. I moved far out in to the country and hunkered down in hateful hiding. I still could not understand what had happened or why she had left me. I was so blind, and the pain just rained down upon me. It was as though I was hiding in the rain.”
“Despair and loneliness ruled my days and I stayed in my hideout, alone with my hurt, anger and pain. Then one day a chance began the turning around, as it so often does. Up against an unmovable mass of trouble that kept my life in ruins, one small stone in the pond set up the ripples that would lead me back to the world – and to you.”
“I went to town for supplies, but instead of leaving right away as I typically did, for some reason I lingered. I wandered downtown, nowhere to go, but just to hang around. In the distance, at some point, I heard a sound I had not heard in so long, the sound of a voice and instrument in song.”
“Drawn forward by an unseen hand I found myself in front of a player, singing the saddest, truest song I had ever heard. I still remember the line he sang; ‘Once upon a time, there was you’. And in that song I heard the truth I had been hiding from for so long. It was me all the time, my ways and my words and my troubles that had driven her away. I had to look it face to face: I was to blame for her leaving.”
“The truth will set you free. Isn’t that how the saying goes? I’ll tell you that this truth may have set me free in the end, but I did not feel it at that moment. I felt the heaviest burden in my heart. Robbed of my anger at her, loneliness, despair, even self hatred took over, and I wandered through a dark night, unknowing. Like a long tunnel through the deepest cloud that night was, and as the day broke I felt I was near the end.”
“I did not realize it, but it was Sunday morning. As the sun rose, a beautiful day was revealed to me in the midst of my own darkness. I walked still, but to where I did not know.”
“Then I heard it – a sound so new and so familiar that I fairly ran to it. Around the corner it came in to focus, its source came in to view. And I found myself on the doorsteps of a small church, far in to Sunday morning worship, making a joyful noise indeed. They sang a song from my childhood, and it stirred something deep in my heart.”
“A crack appeared in the clouds surrounding my soul, and it seemed that with each beat of the tambourine the crack widened, letting the warm sun of my once strong faith beam back in to my heart. My bones began to unfreeze and my mind began to clear. I knew then that the time for hiding was over. I left my country lair and rejoined the world. Life, they say, is with people, and I was ready to live a life again.
She exhaled as though she had been holding her breath through his story. A rush of emotions bounced from her heart to her head and back again as she took in the details – the blanks of time that lead to their meeting were filled in, finally. She felt a great love for this man in front of her, who had borne so much, and had revealed so deeply.
“So this is the point where you met me?” she asked. “Not right away,” he said. “It took me some time to sort things out, to get back on my feet, so to speak. But eventually things began to come together, and about that time I met you.”
He looked at her closely. “Now you know the whole story. I need you to know that things can never, will never, be the same as they were back then. We all travel different roads, sometimes ending in ruin. But from ruins one can rebuild, and I believe in a second chance. I know, because I got one.”
“See how everything leads up to this day? And it’s just like any other day that’s ever been, except it find us here together, now. It’s such a complicated, crazy and confusing world, and sometimes it is hard to know where I fit in, where we belong in it all.”
“But I can lean over,” he said, “and see your sweet face, and I know I’m in the right place.”
Silently they faced each other, and then they embraced. And in that embrace there passed between them the love of years that had passed, and of many years to come -- the faith and the hope that keeps two people together in spite of everything.
“OK,” she said. “that’s what I needed. Now we can go on.” She turned back to stand beside him. She took his hand, and as they both looked ahead, down the road and across the years that stood before them, she smiled. They walked once again.
“While we’re airing out the past,” he said, “have I ever told you about my first girlfriend, years ago in college?” “No,” she said, “what about her?” “Well,” he said, “I must have fallen for her like the proverbial ton of bricks. Man, I was young, and didn’t know a thing about women! Her name was Monica…”
And on they walked in to their future, with the past neatly in tow. Together, wherever they may be, they will always be in The Right Place.
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