The view through the waterfall

Mono Monday: Water

With thanks to  notowennewitt for this challenge. You can view all entries here.



"Chimes sing Sunday morn
Today's the day she's sworn
To steal what she never could own
And race from this hole she calls home
 
Now you're at the wheel
Tell me how, how does it feel?
So good to have equalised
To lift up the lids of your eyes
 
As the miles they disappear
See land begin to clear
Free from the filth and the scum
This American satellite's won
 
She'll carry on through it all
She's a waterfall
 
She'll carry on through it all
She's a waterfall
 
See the steeple pine
The hills as old as time
Soon to be put to the test
To be whipped by the winds of the west
 
Stands on shifting sands
The scales held in her hands
The wind it just whips her and wails
And fills up her brigantine sails
 
She'll carry on through it all

She's a waterfall"


Stone Roses - Waterfall


The view through the waterfall gives you a different perspective on life. I remember being fascinated by a TV adaptation of James Fenimore Coopers'  - The last of the Mohicans in the mid 1970s, in which the fleeing party hide from the Hurons in a cave behind a waterfall. 

But taking this shot also reminded me of the Stone Roses song, that I've quoted and linked to above, from the mid 1980s.  I remember being absolutely fascinated by the ambiguity in the lyrics, and trying to work out just what it was all about.  There is (perhaps) a clue in the song's title: water has enormous power to gradually wear away the obstacles in its path, finding its way to where it wants to go.  I think that the female protagonist is intended to be Britannia, but I could be reading things into those short lines that just were never intended to be there. But if that is correct then the song looks at both the history (reformation, democracy, world war) and the country's future  uncertain place in the world.  

I am far from sure that my view through this particular waterfall is the correct one.  But does it matter?  At the end of the day I still love the poetry involved in the image of the wind filling up her brigantine sails :-)