Heart Of Gold

By L. S. Heatherly

The first hearing of Neil Young's "Heart of Gold" can be
a musical, even spiritual-ontological, milepost in one's life:
a flashback illumination, a residual trance of thought and emotion.

Being engulfed by golden purities of voice, lyrics,
and instruments, perfectly orchestrated into an arrangement,
is rarely captured by musical-song artists.

The beats and rhythms, the instruments and lyrics;
the arrangement unifying all into an inundating flow of
unclouded, human vision, closely effecting a
primordial experience, stirring one very essence of the
human condition, and recording the state of that vital
essence as experienced in our Age!

All this, in metered union with the golden voice
of one man, re-capturing the spirit of Youth afloat,
un-docked, flowing alone, in the growing, unbonded,
searching sea of love -- Modern un-mated adulthood.

Young's rendition of his "Heart of Gold"
returns any true listener, with his humanity still in gear,
to the very essence of one stage of human development,
so distinctively marking one socioculture,
ambiguously called, "civilization."

Through this masterpiece, we relive
the cutting sociocultural blades and binding chains,
imprisoning Youth itself in an un-natural and artificial dilemma.

We hear an artist gracefully, and beautifully, bearing witness:
to an alien, invasive, pseudo place, time and being of the human
condition, for which humanity's children and adults pay:
in the blood and traumas of their lives, families, cultures,
societies, ecosystems, spirits and souls.

To any naturalistic, philosophical soul
it rose to one song of humanity, a sad, forlorn complaint
about the complex obstacles and adulterations
eclipsing any natural, noble pathway of Life in our Time.

Damn! Truth be dug and told:
songster and philosopher
not only merged to score for music;
but scored for the human soul:
one small triumph for humanity!

In our Stormy Age of ego and personality,
true artists make Land,
and take one small step
onto the shores of human sunlight.

Copyright 2010, L. S. Heatherly