LB's political, music business and career-related songs - discuss

[michelej1]

When I first saw the tracklist for UTS, I was taken by CAD as a title, before I'd heard the song.

Susan Dickinson has a poem with that phrase in it and, given Gift of Screws, I wondered if Lindsey had been familiar with other Dickinson family poems. Of course, I remember discussing the difference between the term "castaway" and the phrase "cast away" with David here. But I think Lindsey would take both meanings, as he does in his speech for Big Love, "looking out for love," searching for it, defending against it.

I see a castaway's dreams as not being much different from dreams that have been -- or have had to be -- cast away, in the end.

While I think his musical aspirations are part of CAD, I think it's in the sense that they have prevented him from pursuing personal relationships. And I think that theme comes up throughout the album. For me, it's most beautifully done in Show You How.

"When the play is unoriginal and the cast scrapes and bows and the only way you can seize the day is to blend into the crowd" seems to be both about assimilation by taking the most commercial route musically, but also about not letting go and not allowing his frustration over what that has cost him professionally limit him personally.

Hyssop -
Lives blurred by grief and sin.
Barred close from warmth & light.
Visions of beauty win.
Through fancy's magic night.

Spent souls at close of fray.
Shorn of all gifts but pain.
Shrink from the narrow way.
And gaze at day again.

In thews of grinding ice
Fast in its death cold seams.
Of warmth and sunny skies.
The Arctic Cast away dreams -

No Instants flash and gleam
No brief reprieve from pain.
Or lapse in stony dream -
For those whom love hath slain .