Somehow everything in my life can relate to Switchfoot or a Switchfoot song, including a college-level literary assignment. It makes me wonder how I would exist without Jon Foreman and his poetic brilliance. This feeling, however, reflects an important inner pull of Walt Whitman as he sings the song of America, the song of the mockingbird who lost its lover, the song of the ocean, the song of the hurt and dying, and the song of himself. Art reflects art - artists echo artists.
In the video that introduces this post (credit to Land of Broken Hearts for the video), you, audience, hear the voice of Jon Foreman. If you did not follow the link, here are the words to the poem which inspired the song:"The voice of the sea on a moonless night
Calling, falling, slipping tides
The voice of leaky, dripping pipes
Endless, aching drops of light
Running, pushing, falling down
Always longing, always now
Silent underneath these streets
Even blood finds ways to bleed
Even rivers ways to run
Even rain to reach the sun
Even here within these means
Within this skin, within these dreams
Longing for the other shore
The world we've never been before
Restless for the infinite
With tears of saints and hypocrites
For death and life, for night and day
With blood of black and white and grey
One by one by one by one
Our rivers surge and fight and run
Until the sea of glass we meet
At last completed and complete
Where tide and tear and pain subside
And joy and laughter drink them dry."
Clearly, there is a pain that exists because humans hear, feel, touch, smell, and taste. Because humans exist, there is an infinite insatiability which pervades everything they do. The ocean (and every other existence of the galaxy) calls for the individual to sing his/her song, to echo a story which loops infinitely. Only after the individual has finished telling the story and, essentially, dies can he or she be free from suffering.
In Whitman's "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," the response to this call is described in a very personal way. Whitman, the speaker, receives the call from his Mother. No, this is not an earthly, biological mother. The call comes from Sea, a mother who is life-giving. Initially, as most kids do, Whitman ignores his mother. She quietly but agitatedly sings the song of inspiration in the background. There is an inherent fear to responding to the call, and humans often attempt to ignore it.
So what does Sea need Whitman to say to people? Well, he does not know. He becomes entranced by a happy family of birds and puts this intense emotional pull on the backburner. I can appreciate the interest in birds. Unfortunately, one of the birds fails to return after a separation from its partner.
Loss. One of the heaviest words in the English language. What the remaining bird experiences resounds the song of Sea (which the reader can assume has not stopped but is merely silenced by the present narrative). Loss is what Sea needs Whitman to talk about.
Jon Foreman recognizes this universal experience, "With blood of black and white and grey / One by one by one by one / Our rivers surge and fight and run" and does what he knows best as a method of coping...he writes about it.
The speaker has a bone to pick with this bird who has chosen to share the feeling of sorrow:
"Demon or bird! (said the boy's soul,)
Is it indeed toward your mate you sing? or is it really to me?
For I, that I was a child, my tongue's use sleeping, now I
have heard you," (Whitman 392; ll. 146-149)
Now we have a conversation. Let us assume the speaker is Whitman. Whitman, the bird, the sea, Jon Foreman, and me - we are all in conversation with one another. This is where it gets really crazy. I was born in 1994. Foreman was born in 1976. Whitman was born in 1819. Only God knows how long Sea has been around. Yet we are all talking to one another and sharing the secret, this painful word "DEATH."
So, did I write "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking" also? No. I have written about many things though, many things about which Whitman wrote and many things about which Jon Foreman has written. I will experience death just as everyone else will experience death. The song of the sea, the song of the universe, loops through me to the next from whom it will loop to the next. It is bittersweet to know that none of us can figure out a way to avoid it but comforting to know we all share the experience.
Indeed, the call of the universe to call to others in endless conversation about what we are is a powerful emotional experience. Whitman channels his inner child in "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking," a child born into a world in which the Voice easily overtakes all voices.
Works Cited
Whitman, Walt, and John Hollander. "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking." Leaves of Grass: The Complete 1855 and 1891-92 Editions. 2nd ed. New York: Library of America Paperback Classics, 2011. 388-394. Print.
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