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We Are the Rain King

May 15, 2017 By Kim Tracy Prince 3 Comments

I’ve been listening to “vintage” music on my iPod lately and “Rain King” by Counting Crows came on and I’ve always loved it. I listened hard to the lyrics maybe for the first time.

When I think of heaven
Deliver me in a black-winged bird
I think of flying down into a sea of pens and feathers
And all other instruments of faith and sex and God
In the belly of a black-winged bird

The words struck me hard this time. I looked it up to see what was behind this song.

From Wikipedia:

Adam Duritz: “I read this book in college when I was at Berkeley called Henderson, the Rain King. And the main character in the book was kind of this big, open-wound of a person, Eugene Henderson, he just sort of bled all over everyone around him. For better or for worse, full of joy, full of sorrow, he just made a mess of everything. And when I wrote the song years later, it didn’t really have anything to do with the book except the book had kind of become a totem for how I felt about creativity and writing...it’s sort of a song about everything that goes into writing, all the feelings, everything that makes you want to write, makes you want to maybe pick up a guitar and do it, and express yourself because it’s full of all the doubts and the fears about how I felt about my life at that time.”

I’m not picking up a guitar (anytime soon, but maybe someday, bucket list item and all that) but I do pick up my pen and my keyboard and I try to write something I myself would want to read. So there’s that. What’s yours?

Naturally, the book is now on my hold list at the library. Speaking of which, I finally updated my Books I Have Read list, in case you’re playing along at home.