My son died almost a decade and a half ago. I don’t have nearly as many dreams about him now but when I do, as when I had many, many dreams of him…he never speaks. I can be virtually right next to him in a known location. He never talks. Is there an underlying meaning to this?
DAVE @ Issue no. 225My favourite lyrics from your album Ghosteen are on the final track: “The kid drops his bucket and spade / And climbs into the sun.” I find this so deeply powerful and evocative, although I really can’t say exactly what it means, and I suspect that if I did have an easy and concrete explanation then it would lose much of its power. But of course, the line between profoundly ineffable and nonsensical can be a fine one. My question is, what is your creative process for coming up with these lyrics that may not have an obvious meaning but are nonetheless trying to say something important?
JEREMY @ Issue no. 202After the sudden and tragic death of our beautiful son, Dominic, my brother recommended for me not to listen to ‘Ghosteen’. Like my son, never one to be told what to do, I found it comforting and consoling but am still struggling with a reason to continue in this mostly beautiful yet, too often, painful world. How have you and your family been able to create meaning through such devastation?
CAROL @ Issue no. 95[ ] Something has troubled me since my son Eden died last year at four years old from cancer. Long before he was ever sick, I carried a strange certainty that we wouldn’t have him for long. I can’t explain where it came from. [ ] Now that he’s gone, I think about those things constantly. Part of me worries I somehow manifested it by thinking it. Another part of me feels strangely that I was sensing something that was already written. Do you think it is possible for us to sense the shape of a tragedy before it happens, or do we only see these patterns afterwards because grief is trying to make meaning from the unbearable?
ISABEL @ Issue no. 360