From the recording The Emergent Sea
This song was written in 1993 and has been a band favorite from the beginning. In part a response to Suzanne Vega's Calypso, it was inspired by the same soul drive as the Emergent Sea but under very different circumstances. I was teaching classics and obviously influenced by both Greek mythology and Jung. What can I say? At times love, as beautiful as it is, can also be soul crushing, or at least preventative of spiritual growth and sometimes a person has to go, even if it means leaving a Goddess. The process, I wish to say, is very painful for both and to me the greatest kind of love is that which helps, not hinders another's development. Tim's 3 guitars really give it its sound, though you may not notice that with all the other instruments and one of the guitars sounding like a harpsichord.
Lyrics
1. The greatest hero in Western lines, when in paradise he cried, a goddess right by his side, the promise of eternal life. Yet, for ten years he did pine to leave the isle of the divine Calypso.
2. Star Vega laments she let him go, but does she understand, does she know the pull of heart strings and the pain it brings is as great a thing for the wandering soul?
(Instrumental)
3. Sorrowful as the nightingale she sings, having offered him everything. But do you know the suffocation of a prisoner of love?
4. Lost in the outer ring of ocean, caught on some lonely inner isle of emotion-- do you understand the notion of animus and anima, animal and animate, of the journey that we must all make to our inner unconscious state of mind?