Pain and Love


	PAIN AND LOVE "We have travelled pain and love To call ourselves high born Living in a maze so crazed Lunacy is legend Lunacy is legend Words I fear that clutch my crutch And drive your senses crazy Men or women too get blue, So don't make living hazy No don't make living hazy Once in youth the wisdom crouched Deep inside my bedroom Visitations now are scarce Winter life is lonely Now winter life is lonely Temples that are bleak and bleached Are bleached up on the highway God of truth returned just once And made my prison homely Don't make my life so lonely" Marc Bolan - Dandy In The Underworld A very dark song from Marc Bolan's last official recording, DANDY IN THE UNDERWORLD. Marc Bolan wasn't 30 years old and yet he dares to look back at his relatively short life with the wisdom of an old experienced wanderer. "We have travelled pain and love To call ourselves high born". The quest for love, the quest for an exciting life as demi-gods outside the mediocre standards set up by society in general, suffers no in-betweens. It requires a total dedication and there ain't no guide to help the Outsider on this dangerous path. False pride is certainly a trap for he who has chosen to raise above the vast majority of human beings. Moreover, his sanity is also at stake here, and when Marc states that 'Lunacy is legend', we understand that lunacy is certainly not the liberation the tired mind was expecting. On the contrary, it creates the 'maze so crazed' that can only bring confusion and sorrow. The Bible states that words are at times deadly, even more than swords, and in the second verse, Marc Bolan adds that it is also very easy to get fooled by words, and to fool others as well. Here again the importance of sound is stressed because words are sounds and concepts, they have meanings, they have a life of their own. It is thus very important to be conscious of every spoken word as to express a clear thought, a clear idea, and avoid confusion: "So don't make living hazy". John Lennon expressed a similar idea in Strawberry Fields Forever: "Living is easy with eyes closed, misunderstanding all you see..." Human life is so precious as it allows the soul to understand its constitutional spiritual position. It must not be wasted in vague concepts. "Once in youth the wisdom crouched Deep inside my bedroom Visitations now are scarce, Winter life is lonely Now winter life is lonely" Youth allows numerous possibilities but one often lacks the knowledge and experience to use it properly. So many opportunities have been offered to all of us and so many times, we have just passed our way. But as one gets older, one realizes these opportunities may not come again. In this verse, Marc Bolan speaks as if he was himself an old man, whom indeed he was as we usually think a man is old because he would soon die: somehow or other, Marc Bolan had said on numerous occasions that he knew he would die before he would be thirty years old, few months after the release of this song... "Temples that are bleak and bleached Are bleached up on the highway God of truth returned just once And made my prison homely Don't make my life so lonely" The line 'God of truth returned just once and made my prison homely' is most important here, as if a second chance had been granted with the gift of consciousness, and truth itself makes things better, 'homely'. Once certainty is installed, life becomes bearable for the soul trapped in this material body, compared in most sacred scriptures as the prison of the soul. But Marc Bolan adds an extra line: "Don't make my life so lonely". Most living entities are under the spell of Maya, illusion and it becomes impossible for the hankering soul to communicate its 'disarray' when all the other prisoners think they are actually free. Marc Bolan realizes no one can really understand his fate. Ivan Kocmarek adds: "As you say this is a song of "blackness", but I wouldn't say that it is one of pessimism, just a statement of fact, that there is so much suffering (pain) in life. I think Marc cannot be pessimistic about this because he knows that it is possible to overcome this suffering eventually. Even love, as we know it in the world, so often leads to pain when we lose the object of our love for whatever reason. This song is a very Buddhistic song for me. And seems to focus on the First of the Four Noble Truths, that all life is suffering."