My wife’s out of town tonight, and I’m in a funny mood. So, inspired by another conversation in another diary, I’ve decided to have some fun.
I saw my first Grateful Dead show when I was just barely 15 years old. And I was enchanted. I wasn’t really attracted to the accouterments of being a deadhead. I was strictly into the music, and especially the lyrics. The lyrics of the Grateful Dead are so rich, and so poignant that they almost demand a theological exegesis.
So, I’ll give my interpretations of a few of their songs, beginning with Stella Blue:
they melt into a dream
A broken angel sings
from a guitar
In the end there’s just a song
comes crying like the wind
through all the broken dreams
and vanished years
Stella Blue
When all the cards are down
there’s nothing left to see
There’s just the pavement left
and broken dreams
In the end there’s still that song
comes crying like the wind
down every lonely street
that’s ever been
Stella Blue
I’ve stayed in every blue-light cheap hotel
Can’t win for trying
Dust off those rusty strings just
one more time
Gonna make em shine
It all rolls into one
and nothing comes for free
There’s nothing you can hold
for very long
And when you hear that song
come crying like the wind
it seems like all this life
was just a dream
Stella Blue
To begin with, T.S. Eliot referred to: “Of restless nights in one-night cheap hotels…” in “The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock”.
The ‘Stella’ was the name of a guitar used by Lead Belly and other blues pioneers. Stella also means ‘star’ in Latin.
But all of that is beside the point. Stella Blue is existential, and describes both the moment before death, where we look back on our lives, and the momentary occasions when we become somber and reflective, more generally.
Stella is ostensibly a women, and many Dead songs equate women with a song. But Stella is really more than a song. After you have lived your life and suffered all the disappointments that life has to offer, there will still be something ineffable left over, something that sings, something that made it all worth while.
And that something has “cr(ied) like the wind down every lonely street that’s ever been”.
With the wisdom of Soloman’s “you can’t take it with you” we are instructed “there is nothing that you can hold for very long”.
At the end, we will undoubtedly reflect that it seems like all our lives have been “just a dream”, and yet there is something that we will leave behind as a kind of marker, or indication that we were here. And whatever that is, we can call it “Stella Blue”.
