Wednesday, August 25, 2010

Jump Little Children: Cathedrals

Last weekend, Kevin and I took a beautiful drive up to Boothbay Harbor, Maine to sit and watch the sailboats come in and out of the harbor. On the drive up, "Cathedrals" came on the radio and, as usual, stunned me into silence.

This is one of those songs. I've never owned it. I had to look up who wrote it for this post. Turns out, it's by a now-defunct band called Jump, Little Children (the name of a very cool Sonny Terry and Brownie McGhee song...maybe more on that next week). Yet, every time I hear it, I hush. I turn up the radio. I feel a swelling in my chest. Every time.

It's the melody. The slow build. The beautiful cello. But it's also the lyrics.

I once spent a summer in Bologna with my grandmother's cousins. My "aunt" Paola (really a cousin some times removed) insisted that we go to Rome. She took me on the train and we spent the day in hot, crowded lines looking at the all the beautiful architecture and breathtaking murals. It was a strange feeling, being in the presence of such awe-inspiring history and art in the middle of a crushing, Disney-like mass of people. We entered the Sistine Chapel and were literally pushed by the crowd, shoulder to shoulder, from one end of the building to the other, necks craning to take in the view as we were jostled out the door. I felt small. I felt wonder. I felt overloaded. I worried about my purse.

Mostly, the experience gave me a profound and inexplicable feeling of loneliness, almost of loss. A longing for home, in the truest, non-locational sense of the word. And somehow this short song by Jump, Little Children captures all of that. So simply. So beautifully.

Jump, Little Children: Cathedrals (live at the Music Farm, 2002)



In the shadows of tall buildings
Of fallen angels on the ceilings
Oily feathers in bronze and concrete
Faded colors, pieces left incomplete
The line moves slowly past the electric fence
Across the borders between continents

In the cathedrals of New York and Rome
There is a feeling that you should just go home
And spend a lifetime finding out just where that is

In the shadows of tall buildings
The architecture is slowly peeling
Marble statues and glass dividers
Someone is watching all of the outsiders
The line moves slowly through the numbered gate
Past the mosaic of the head of state

In the cathedrals of New York and Rome
There is a feeling that you should just go home
And spend a lifetime finding out just where that is

In the shadows of tall buildings
Of open arches endlessly kneeling
Sonic landscapes echoing vistas
Someone is listening from a safe distance
The line moves slowly into a fading light
A final moment in the dead of the night

In the cathedrals of New York and Rome
There is a feeling that you should just go home
And spend a lifetime finding out just where that is

1 comment:

Kelley B said...

Thanks for reminding me of this song - I heard this ages ago and forgot it but it affected me too and I think I need to own it. Lyrics are amazing.