I think it is fair to assert that most songwriters would like to communicate some depth of meaning or something truly profound occasionally in their music. The truly good songs, just like books that can be considered literature, have something far greater than style alone. The good ones stick with you, cause you to think about or reflect on your own life, make you feel something poignant and real. The good ones transcend the normalcy of our days and crack through our consciousness, wheedling their way into our conscience.
That is what “Above the Clouds of Pompeii” by Bear’s Den did to me this week. I have heard and enjoyed the song before, realizing some of the quality of the music, but for the first time this week I finally let the song and its album settle in a bit.
I do not believe that a review of this song needs to be exceedingly long. In fact, the real meat of what I want to say about it can be communicated in a short paragraph. But before we get there, a little bit of exposition will allow us to approach the song purposefully and systematically.
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The song is sung by a younger speaker talking about and to an older family member, probably a father or grandfather, whose wife passed sometime before. The two men have lived life together, the elder dogged by the memory and loss of his beloved and the younger raised in the lingering shadow of her absence.
In my reading, however, the relationship between the two men is somewhat blurred. There seems to be enough distance between the men that the elder is probably a grandfather to the second, which gives some meaning to the statement, “I was the son you always had,” as opposed to what is a more typical phrase, “I was the son you never had.” Perhaps the grandfather and grandmother had raised the child from his youngest years. Through the years it is clear that the young man has developed great respect for his elder and cares deeply for his pain. He claims, “You were a god in my eyes,” but there is also an element of pity for the obvious pain that his elder feels. He says over and over again in the chorus, “Please don’t cry. Hold your head up high. She would want you to.” The statement may be said by and to each man in turn.
Obviously, the young man is trying to comfort his elder through the tremendous pain of losing a spouse. We see a flashback to the funeral in which the speaker concedes that he could not have had even the slightest idea of the pain felt by his elder when he says, “I was too young to understand the flowers slipping from your hands.” The young man, only a child at the time, did not appreciate the weight of that type of loss. He also recounts when his elder held him in a quiet, perhaps uncomfortable moment a bit later in life. The grandfather clarifies, “Don’t you know I miss her too? I miss her just as much as you.” The old man, having experienced tremendous loss, did a good enough job in seeing his ward through his grief. So good, in fact, that the young man may not have even seen elder’s pain at the time. But upon reflection, from a time and place of maturity, it is clear to the young man that loss and pain haunted their life together. For those of us who have experienced such loss at a young age, we are thankful for the strength shown by the grown-ups who guide us through our pain while they are busy wrestling with their own. This young man sees his grandfather’s strength while also clearly seeing his vulnerability and utter emotional ruin.
All of this depth of meaning is developed in one brief image presented at the very beginning of the song. The rest of the lyrics that come after give color to the allegorical meaning housed in the title and first verse of the song.
“Above the Clouds of Pompeii” is a surprisingly rich way to introduce the theme of the specter of loss that haunts a boy and his grandfather after the death of the grandmother. The two men live in a world apart, on the slopes above a proper town. But the town, life outside of the reality of their pain, is entombed by their grief. Their perspective of the mummified existence of others and the world around them is defined by a sustained lifelessness. For the elder especially, after the death of his wife, the rest of the world is buried and frozen by the influence that she still holds over him. It is under her mountainous shadow and lingering presence that the two men try to keep living a life that is characterized by death and loss. The grandmother’s absence is a lifeless volcano that forever buried the lives of her husband and grandchild under her consequence. With their home on the slopes of Vesuvius, the two men are overshadowed by death and removed from life, held in the lingering presence of a dormant power of which they are unwilling or unable to let go.
This is a tremendously rich metaphor for the pain of loss and the inability to move on after death. The image should settle into our imagination as a bittersweet representation of what we will all likely feel at some point in our lives. Instead of falling victim to the fate of these two characters, may we instead show respect and love for our dead without allowing the eruption of our emotions to bury and fossilize us as living mummies, frozen in the past. Let us instead continue to live and grow in the rich soil of their memory and burst with renewed, verdant, and youthful energy, preserving their influence in the lives we lead.