Dust In The Wind

Being human in the cold air of autumn

This installment is based on a reader request. If you have a particular song you would like explored, let me know.

Dust In The Wind

Kansas, 1978

Beautiful things can emerge from simple elements. Like our lives, emerging from ephemeral moments.

The simple act of being present in each activity during our days, constructs a wondrously complex shape we call a life.

I close my eyes

Only for a moment and the moment’s gone.

But it’s so easy to miss life as it goes whizzing past. We always tell ourselves, “I’ll be that person I want to be later, when the time is right.” A moment only lasts a moment. Then the moment’s gone. Did you catch it? Or were you thinking about the future, ruminating on the past?

The trick is to both notice your current moment and to not become distracted by the noise, the attention hijacking. To participate in your life fully while recognizing the major story arcs. This is a delicate tension--noticing and being present while not succumbing to thought-avoidance and autopilot.

This song provides that contrast. First (and always) we roll along the pulse of quick-moving arpeggios, the frantic activities of our day, so much apparent urgency. Then long-held notes rise above the hustle and bustle. The important pieces of life, the long-held relationships. All held in delicate balance.

The opening puts me in mind of a stark, late-Autumn cornfield in the northeast. A very similar vibe to George Winston’s classic “Autumn” album.

I can imagine myself standing there, shivering in the cold as ripples of chill wind swirl. Dark sky above, the fading light of day. Ripples, arpeggios. Then, finally, a human voice. The lyrics begin with absolute profundity.

It’s haunting how the vocal line rises and the guitar line descends. Such sweet tension.

As a kid, when this song came on the radio I would enjoy the pretty melody and sincere singing while waiting for the next chirpy, high-energy tune. But if this song came on at night... Well, some songs get a lot more serious when you hear them at night.

Lying in the dark in my chilly bedroom, only the glow of the power light from my battery-powered radio/cassette player providing a small, green point of focus, songs like this got me thinking about the meaning of life.

For kids, time moves achingly slow. Holidays are always too far away. Activities and errands take forever. And a school year could stretch into distant infinity. Yet all these songs say life passes too quickly. How could this be?

Kids still feel the deeper magic. While we adults have learned to divide our attention across hundreds on inane distractions. We keep ourselves so busy with unimportant, urgent-seeming tasks and messages, media, sports seasons, jobs, games, ... It’s no wonder time seems a blur to us.

Who among us hasn’t looked up in the month of December and cried, “What happened to all the big things I was going to do this year?”

Those hopes and dreams, plans for a better you, a better life? They got shoved aside one moment at time by the onrushing arpeggios.

Your year is made from days. And, to paraphrase Annie Dillard, how you spend your days is how you spent your year.

One of the most devastating lines I have ever read came at the end of Chekhov’s play “The Cherry Orchard.” The family has just left their beloved home, sold to pay debts. The new owner’s workers are already chopping down the beautiful cherry trees, erasing a lifetime of happy memories for the family. The empty house is quickly locked and boarded up. And finally Fiers, the servant walks into the room, suffering from illness and realizes they have forgotten and left him. He can hear the carriages rushing away over the chopping of the axes.

Fiers lies down, resigned to his fate, stating that “life’s gone on as if I’ve never lived.” Surely he can remember being a hopeful young boy with dreams about his life or being a virile young man with so many productive years ahead of him?

But now, “I’ll lie down. . . . You’ve no strength left in you, nothing left at all...” It’s over and it’s as if he never lived.

Fiers lies still and the curtain drops.

I don’t know if he was devastated, but I was. I have never forgotten the feeling of reading that scene. He dedicated his entire life to serving that family and they didn’t even remember he was in the house with them. I didn’t have answers, but knew I never wanted that to be me.

Folk songs lend profundity to music. They seem like they have always existed. And while this song is not strictly a folk song, the chorus certainly sounds like one. The first time you hear this song, you know that you have heard it before.

Why does it seem so familiar?

Because we are all human. We share the same fate.

And how about the two violins arguing where a guitar solo would normally sit? What are they trying convince each other? That important things aren’t really so important? That they can somehow escape their fate? Like two friends chatting over a nervous coffee.

I don’t think so. Those two violins make me think of two dry leaves, brown and fallen on October ground, blown hither and thither as are we all. We can only try to hold on to the leaves most special to us, to hope we get blown in similar directions.

Of course the ending is truly haunting. That candle in darkness, the warm human voice fades to a ghost-like cry, an echo of itself. And then fades. As do we all. Our barbaric yawp slowly weakening, worrying that we’ll no longer be heard, that too many dear leaves have blown away from us through the gusts of life.

But this isn’t intended to be negative. Life is important. You are important.

It’s just a reminder that you only get so many “next years”, so make this one count. Do the important thing. Become your best self. Use these quotes, use this song as pointers to guide you toward your best life.

And, on the other side, if you start taking yourself too seriously, let’s remember the words of The Bard:

...The way to dusty death. Out, out, brief candle!

Life’s but a walking shadow, a poor player,

that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more.

It is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury,

signifying nothing.

- William Shakespeare from “Macbeth”

In other words, all we are is dust. And it will get windy.