I live in a city with a cathedral dome,
At the top of a hill with trees,
From all around worshippers come,
To climb the steps on their knees.
Inside the dome there's a glass box.
And inside the box a heart,
They say it belonged to a saintly man,
So it feels like he didn't depart.
Below the cathedral acres of grass,
Stones in rows and rows,
Inscribed with dates and many names,
That most people will never know.
From here me and you,
Have the most beautiful view.
From here me and you,
Have the most beautiful view.
I prayed for you, and you arrived,
I was a lonely soul.
Sometimes having hope and prayer,
Is your only means of control.
Said you needed a certain book,
And figured you'd try my library,
Together we scanned the shelves to look,
As they say the rest is history.
Together we walk the cathedral hill,
Between trees and rows of stones,
And sometimes we find a place to rest,
That we choose to call our home.
From here me and you,
Have the most beautiful view.
From here me and you,
Have the most beautiful view.
4 comments:
It always seemed to me that your true muse is your beloved city. Something that easy for you to sing about. Or is this about some specific incident, one of your many interesting experiences at the library?
I like both versions by the way, but prefer version 1. I like the music better; it's livelier.
This one didn’t turn out at all like I had expected. Wrote the words. Thought I’d eventually come up with a tune that was uplifting, maybe romantic. But the only thing that kept coming to me was melancholy. Minor chords. So I forced some major chords in there to get some balance (why the D Major and the D Minor swing back and forth at the end of the chorus). I wasn’t happy. So I had this other chord progression lying around that sounded less depressing and figured I’d try to squeeze the lyrics into that one to see how it fit. I don’t think it does. The consensus so far is the original version works better. My wife said I obviously had a visit this week to a very sick aunt on my mind. I hadn’t thought about it consciously, but I think she’s right. Her uncle, a physician, is taking care of her in her final days at home. It was deeply moving to experience his love and devotion to her. What it has to do with Montreal, I don’t know. Except of course as metaphor and the fact of the real landmarks mentioned. But it has more to do with a good man, a lifetime of devotion, spiritual faith, and sadly, the end of life. It does also tell the story briefly of how my wife and I met in a library.
Wow, you met your wife in the library you were working in? That's epic.
Yes. Well, I had met her a few years earlier a couple of times. We knew of each other. But at that time she was studying in Israel. Working on a masters in Jewish studies, but at McGill. She had to come back to Mtl to write her comprehensives. Heard I was working at the Jewish Public Library and decided to look me up. Actually, she came to look for a book she needed to read for her exams. That was the pretence, anyway. Couldn’t find a translation anywhere. A novel by a prewar Austrian novelist named David Vogel who wrote in Hebrew, which was unusual. The novel was about a masochistic relationship between a sadistic German aristocrat and her meek Jewish husband. You get the analogy. The novel’s called Married Life. We were married two years later.
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