June 2019 – Some Words Left Behind

The below lyrics from George Harrison’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” are such an accurate representation of our time, as they were for a previous time when fear reigned over love. These two forces are of course always at play, the prevalence of one over the other oscillates over time. Our world is increasingly driven by fear and I’m not sure there’s any way to reverse that other than fear running its natural course to an extreme that the public can’t help but wake up to, realising what their fear has caused all too late – as happened after the atrocities of World War 2 and has done in less catastrophic fear dips globally since then. Maybe only following these extremes can love once again prevail.

I look at you all, see the love there that’s sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps
I look at the floor and I see it needs sweeping
Still my guitar gently weeps

I don’t know why nobody told you
How to unfold your love
I don’t know how someone controlled you
They bought and sold you

I look at the world and I notice it’s turning
While my guitar gently weeps
With every mistake we must surely be learning
Still my guitar gently weeps

I don’t know how you were diverted
You were perverted too
I don’t know how you were inverted
No one alerted you

I look at you all, see the love there that’s sleeping
While my guitar gently weeps
Look at you all
Still my guitar gently weeps

… The song is a lament for how a universal love for humankind is latent in all individuals yet remains unrealised. Inspiration for the song came to him when he was visiting his parents in Warrington, Cheshire, and he began reading the I Ching, or “The Book of Changes”.

As Harrison put it, “[the book] seemed to me to be based on the Eastern concept that everything is relative to everything else, as opposed to the Western view that things are merely coincidental.” Embracing this idea of relativism, he committed to writing a song based on the first words he saw upon opening a book, which happened to be “gently weeps”. Harrison continued to work on the lyrics after this initial writing session.