Internal Idealism

For a while, I had been trying to find the right Katie Melua song to introduce on this blog.  Some of her songs seem contradictory in my logic.  Can we really be sure that there's exactly nine million bicycles in Beijing?  It's a great song though.  I continued to be on the look out for the ideal first choice, and (pun intended) I can now call off the search.  She's got this amazingly smooth jazz recording on her 2009 Pictures album called "In My Secret Life."  Like in John Mayer's "Slow Dancing in a Burning Room," Melua, her back up singers, and the accompanying musicians make the music run so slow and hypnotically.  I would compare the music to the movement in a lava lamp.

This song isn't written or composed by Katie Melua, nor by her producer and regular collaborator, Mike Blatt.  This slow moving river has its origin in the great Leonard Cohen's imagination.  According to a Wikipedia entry, the public knew since 1988 about this song's development.  The thing is that the song stewed for 13 more years before it was presented to us.  Since that release, it had been adapted and covered by other artists, including the Animals' Eric Burdon.

It's about still having a deep idealist side removed from external world of realists.  So much can go wrong in the world, but there's still joy found in the confines of the mind.  A couple may no longer be together (for one reason or another), but in the person's mind, they still make love regularly.  He owns up to misdeeds committed out of desperation, and acknowledges internally that despite doing wrong, he tries to remain noble.  When hearing all the deaths and barbaric acts in the world, he finds some peace and reasoning internally.

One can say that ignorance is bliss, and that may be true.  The thing is that this world goes through periods of despair where the first step in making things better may be taking comfort in our own minds first.  Gradually, I'd like to hope that our stubborn idealism can change the world.  If the positivity glows like a flame in the lanterns of our minds.  What we do, and what we create serves as the glass transparency allowing the light to shine outward from within protection, inspiring the surroundings to glow in its radiance.