“There was a question somewhere asked with all the answers inside, but I’ll never find the kid before she’s gone.” (The Tallest Man on Earth)
You might think it strange to start with someone else’s words in a celebration of a book with lyrics from another musician. But the mystery of the above words by the ‘Tallest Man On Earth’ grasp my feeling today. And; I find it strange to use for such a celebration, the same words we are celebrating.
I received a box..
It was delivered at our house just in time to wave at us while we drove towards the French seaside.
Today we returned, and with a box on my lap, and our happy cat by my side sleeping (He is happy that everyday life is restored for him) I sit down with a coffee, and I opened the box…
In it this extraordinary book.
Unspeakable: The Collected Lyrics of Joe Henry, 1985–2020.
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It was an emotional experience I must admit. Reading it brought memories back alive, and I noticed, the longer I read, the beginning of my hands trembling. For example, I once started these journals entitling this space after one of Joe’s songs.
If you fear the angels above while you sleep
Then I'll be the blood, you paint on your door
Your dream is a worry that nothing will keep
But time is a story and there will be more
But I don’t experience it as an assembly of lyrics, poems, or songs (whatever seems appropriate). It is its whole that touches me. It is one. The universe I’m carrying on my lap is a life to its date. Longer than the 34 years it spans. There is also the unwritten history before. There is always the road before the map.
Humbly I bow and I wonder how Joe reacted when he checked out at the counter of the beautiful wooden archive of song, and suddenly receiving from the clerk this package of acknowledgements. I imagine I would feel the need to sit down, for it would be to overwhelming.
As I can think of birds flying as poetry, I also see this beautiful book in the same regions, and I’ll seek in it from time-to-time comfort, answers, questions, … life. But I’ll never find the kid before she’s gone.
Congratulations Joe!
Much Love,
Stefan
Unspeakable: The Collected Lyrics of Joe Henry, 1985–2020.
