Uh oh. I set off the Progressive Rock Monster, @klax. Haha.
For the record, my father played piano in a gospel quartet in the 1950s. He only read shape notes. For those who don’t know, the music looks the same on the page, but each note on the scale has its own shape – square, triangle, circle, etc. The beauty of the system is that scales can be transposed instantly, at a glance. Interesting stuff.
Here’s an acapella song I think we need right now …
Dang. I was listening to Fire and Rain. Why’d it disappear? Here’s a tune also applicable to today. I didn’t understand the metaphor of a “well on the hill” until I was much older.
There’s a well on the hill, you just can’t kill for Jesus, there’s a well on the hill, let it be.
Don’t build no heathen temples where the Lord has done laid his hand, now,
there’s a well on the hill, let it be
Everyone’s talking 'bout the gospel story, some shall sink and some shall rise.
Everyone’s talking 'bout the train to glory. Long, long time till it gets here to you, baby.
I still don’t. Can I get a clue?
Me too.
But let me speculate first … if you’re trying to dig down to the water table, you probably don’t go to the top of the nearest hill to start digging, right? If you’re lookin’ for Jesus … there are some starting points that will make it even harder for you to reach that living water, right? …Can’t kill for Jesus.
Ever since I heard it back around 2014ish I have always related his song to my faith journy and its more relevant then ever now. Really great song and also great Christian rock band, just a shame they only came out with one album 
We As Human - Let Me Drown - Lyric Video - YouTube
Didn’t think I’d go for anything like this but that’s not a bad sound. Would you classify them as heavy metal? The lyrics on the other hand … maybe I’m just the wrong age. Probably would have liked it in my twenties. A bit too dramatic in an overwrought way for my elderly sensibilities. But thanks for sharing.
Now I see I can’t see myself
I believed I was stronger than I felt
Everything turned to golden
Then it fell apart
It’s the same old story
It’s the same sad song
Where did I go wrong?
Lay me down in the waves
Let the water wash away
And if I leave with the tide
In the morning I will rise
So lay me down
Don’t lift me out
Let me drown
Take a breath
Hold it in and sink beneath
Feel the eyes of the living watching me
Lay me down in the water
Leave the past behind
There’s a time to be born
And a time to die
And somewhere they collide
Lay me down in the waves
Let the water wash away
And if I leave with the tide
In the morning I will rise
So lay me down
Don’t lift me out
Let me drown
I have walked in distant waters
Let me drown
But I never walked alone
Let me drown
If my heart should ever wander
Let the water lead me home
Lay me down in the waves
Let the water wash away
And if I leave with the tide
In the morning I will rise
So lay me down
Don’t lift me out
Lay me down in the waves
Let the water wash away
And if I leave with the tide
In the morning I will rise
So lay me down
Don’t lift me out
Let me drown
Almost all of Rich Mullins’ songs strike deep for me.–with his folk songs in part somewhat blues, but also frequently a wry sense of humor around a deep faith
In “Hard,” he wrote,
"And it’s hard when your soul has been stripped bare,
Hard to lift your eyes toward Heaven
Oh Lord, it’s hard to be a man of prayer,
Lord, it’s hard to be like Jesus.
"Well, His eye is on the sparrow,
And the lilies of the field, I’ve heard;
And He will watch over you, and He will watch over me,
So we can dress like flowers and eat like birds…
“Well, I am a good Midwestern boy,
I give an honest day’s work if I can get it,
I don’t cheat on my taxes, I don’t cheat on my girl.
I’ve got values that would make the White House jealous”
I don’t know either, and goggle was no help. If like Merv, I can ponder, I would guess it refers to a source of water as in living water provided on Calvary’s hill, and says to not profane it, in like fashion killing for Jesus would profane the name of Jesus. So, I think the song is saying respect that which made Holy. Now, that sounds a bit too spiritual for James Taylor, but he is a poet, so maybe.
In secular terms, a well on a hill is likely to be in a deeper aquifer, and free from polluting runoff that might plague a well in a lowland, to build on Merv’s idea. It would still mean something about not polluting that which is pure.
Sorry Jay! I did two in a row and thought that was disproportionate:
Sorry I bailed right after posting. Mervin and Phil are on the right track …
Sorry, Phil. JT invented the metaphor, so Google is no help. As Mervin said, water flows downhill, and you don’t build a well on top of a hill. I suspect it would be dry. Others might see it a different way. Does the context offer a clue?
Just like the Bible, literature and song are products of culture, so any interpretation has to take historical context into account. The song came out in 1970. Vietnam War. Civil Rights. The “Jesus Freak” movement. The “train to glory” is an oblique reference to Curtis Mayfield’s 1965 song “People Get Ready,” which he wrote after MLK’s March on Washington. The song became almost an unofficial theme for the civil rights movement. In an NPR interview, Mayfield’s biographer said, “It is a song of faith really, a faith that transcends any racial barrier and welcomes everyone onto the train. The train that takes everyone to the promised land, really.”
So, my interpretation … Conservative Christians at the time were preaching a gospel that supported the war and neglected civil rights. According to James Taylor, that well is dry. It’s a heathen temple masquerading a church. Civil rights? A long, long time before that train comes around for you, babe. It’s a protest song worthy of our own circumstances today.
A recent protest song that often brings tears to my eyes, written by Lucy Dacus after the women’s march on Washington following Trump’s inauguration:
Chorus:
For those of you who told me I should stay indoors
Take care of you and yours, take care of you and yours
But me and mine (Me and mine)
Me and mine (Me and mine)
We’ve got a long way to go before we get home
'Cause this ain’t my home anymore
I’ll add instrumentals here too, the ones that give me Stendhal’s:
from 1:43:13:-
Its more of Christian rock, some Christian heavy metal bands i can think of on the top of my head are “Fit for a King”, “Demon Hunter”, “Norma Jean”, “Oh Sleeper”, and “Silent Planet”.
Still not sure if the well analogy is right. After all, Jack and Jill…
Also this well drilling guide cautions against drilling downhill from latrines, and cautions how heavy rains wash in and can contaminate well water. Anyway, not sure JT knew much about wells.
https://www.unicef.org/wash/files/04.pdf
Haha. Somebody always wants to quibble … no offense. Downhill from latrines reminds me of a Boy Scout trip to a Methodist camp in a TX Panhandle canyon. We swam in the stream and caught catfish from it and ate them all weekend before an unknown official wandered upon the scene and told us there was a feedlot not far upstream. I survived.
I live not far from the Rio Grande. I have two (inoperable) wells in my backyard. The water table is less than 25 feet underground, so any trees that survive to maturity and manage to tap into that source are guaranteed to live. That’s why there’s a forest along the river from Santa Fe to El Paso. The Bosque, in Spanish. My friends in Placitas are next to the mountain. Wells drilled up there have to go down hundreds of feet to hit water.
Sorry. I grew up in the High Plains. The Ogallala Aquifer was hundreds of feet deep. (I should add that the High Plains is flat as a board. The Ogallala probably sits under @Mervin_Bitikofer’s feet too, and it’s being depleted at an alarming rate.) Because it was filtered through hundreds of feet of soil and rock, that water was pure and sweet. The water that comes from the well in my backyard is undrinkable.
Ha! I grew up irrigating cotton from the Ogallala, and still have a old medicine bottle full of fossil shells pumped up from about 400 feet below the plains, perhaps my first confirmation as a kid that this old earth is a lot older that I previously thought.
I heard one of my classmates sing “The Rose” to the school when I was 12. I was going through a very hard time after the death of my grandfather. I was transfixed by the beauty of the song (and the singer 
). It remains one of my most precious memories, and has often helped me through hard times.
Interesting, I never interpreted it that way. I thought it referred to
That would be an interesting circumstance in which to first hear this one. I’ll bet it helped though. Too bad this concert performance is so bad. I should have checked it before posting. The studio version is so much better.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
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