Hope in exile: messenger wind blows through Bruce Cockburn

Review of Bruce Cockburn, You've Never Seen Everything, True North Records, 2003. Produced by Bruce Cockburn and Colin Linden.

What happens when "the vil lage idiot takes the throne?" hat happens when "his is the wind in which, all must sway"? What happens when the spirit of the age is committed to the insanity of greed and "hooked on avarice"? Well, sings Bruce Cockburn, "all sane people, die now" and are "lifted tip and carried away." Why? Because "you've got no home in this world of sorrows".

We live in a time of exile. We are exiled from sanity, from grace, from love, from spiritual openness. And in such exile we live "under the rain of all our dark tomorrows," we "ride the ribbon of shadows" and "never see the light falling all around." And we run the risk of losing all hope, of moving beyond the humility of acknowledging that "you've never seen everything" to the despair of not being able to see at all.

Bruce Cockburn's twenty-seventh album is a prophetic response to our time of exile. Combining evocative and hard-hitting lyrics with impeccable musicianship, Cockburn weaves together his own classic folk-rock sound with progressive jazz, world music percussion, tastefully executed synthesizer loops and even a little rap on the opening track. If Cockburn has always played with the right hand of a folk artist and the left hand of a jazz musician, then his collaboration with pianist Andy Milne on this album, has given the left hand an influence beyond the guitar to the compositional process itself. While many of the tracks on the album have a decidedly jazz feel to them, "Everywhere Dance" has all the markings of what could well become a jazz classic. Here is Cockburn the jazz vocalist.

Vision, light and spirit

Thematically the album is preoccupied with vision, light and spirit. But permeating through it all are the tell-tale exilic themes of despair and hope. "You've never seen everything" sings Cockburn on the title track, and this is from someone who has seen a lot! Noting that "greed twists eternal in the human breast," this song, together with "Postcards from Cambodia" chronicles the depths of brokenness that the artist has seen. This pain is not some cosmic plot; it is the bad fruit of human idolatry. And no matter how much pain you have seen, you've never seen it all. There is always more.

But how much can we really see if we are in the dark? In "All our Dark Tomorrows," the artist sings, "I can see in the dark--it's where I used to live." And what he sees there is "excess and the gaping need." And if you keep looking and "follow the money--see where it leads" you will find "shrunken men stuffed up with greed." Recalling images from a much earlier album, Cockburn has always been able to see "just beyond the range of normal sight." In this album he must see in the dark if he is to shape our imaginations to receive the light. And light is what he is after. With profound biblical sensitivity Cockburn will not allow the darkness of our present time, to have the last word. Maybe the "light comes at you sideways," he muses in "Open," but it nonetheless "enfolds you like a gown." Or in the unspeakably beautiful song "Celestial Horses," Cockburn sings, "there's darkness in the canyon/ but the light comes pounding through/ for me/for you." You see, while in exile it may feel like the future will be an ominous series of "dark tomorrows," Cockburn's vision remains one of a new dawn, a new day of light in a new creation. And so the final track on the album, "Messenger Wind," leaves us with intimations of that new dawn: "sun coining up paints the snow all around with rose light."

The crisis is spiritual

There is, however, no light, indeed no vision, without the spirit. For Cockburn, the crisis of our times is fundamentally spiritual in character. And from a reference to "the still small voice" on the opening track, "Tried and Tested," to the concluding "Messenger Wind," this album is an attempt to hear the Spirit--precisely in tension with the violent and aggressive spirits of our time. In "Open" the artist feels an "endless hunger" for spiritual "energy and motion" that refuses to stand still. "There's an aching in my hipbone," sings this angel wrestler. Or might a better image be that of dancing? Where might we find truth in this culture of deceit? In "Everywhere Dance" Cockburn sings that "in wounded streets and whispered prayer/the dance is the truth and it's everywhere."

But this truth cannot be perceived with "tunnel vision and fear of change" which "are expressions/of a soul that turned its back on love." No, the eye that can see where the Spirit is moving is one that perceives a creation rooted in love that conspires towards community. So, in "Put it in Your Heart," Cockburn sings that "all the sirens all the tongues/the song of air in every lung/heaven's perfect alchemy/put me with you and you with me." And while an idolatrous culture that sacrifices everything to a golden calf may show "unbelievable indifference" to "life/spirit/the future/ anything green/anything just" ("You've Never Seen Everything"), Cockburn tells us in "Postcards from Cambodia" that "I bow down my head, /say a prayer for us all. /That we don't tear the spirit/when it comes to call."

Is there hope in exile?

Can there be hope in exile? Only if you have liberating and life-giving memories that can shape a vision of a better future. And so, on the second last track of the album Cockburn calls us to memory:

   A mid the rumours and the expectation
   and all the stories dreamt and lived
   Amid the clangour and the dislocation
   and the things to fear and to forgive
   Don't forget
   about delight
   y'know what I'm saying to you

In the amnesia of exile, with its rumours of wars, failed stories, fear and dislocation, there is a liberating memory.

   Amid the post-ironic postulating
   and the poet's pilfered rhymes
   Meaning feels like it's evaporating
   Out of sight and out of mind
   Don't forget
   about delight

Even in the face of postmodern meaninglessness, despair and anxiety, Cockburn wants to remind us of delight. What memory is this? Might it go all the way back to the Creator's delight in the very goodness of creation? Might this memory of the Creator giggling his joy in creation, "It is good, quite delightful," be Cockburn's most foundational and most liberating memory? Against all the evidence, against all that has been seen, there is still a more primordial vision--the eye of God, now filled with tears of sorrow but then filled with tears of joy.

Might our vision be renewed to see again with joy? Cockburn ends the album with these lines:

"Messenger wind swooping out of the sky lights each tiny speck in the human kaleidoscope with hope."

This wind that hovered over the waters at creation, led Israel in exodus liberation, spoke through the prophets, anointed Jesus and fell upon the church at Pentecost, still sheds light and brings hope in our exile. This album is an agent of that Spirit, and Cockburn demonstrates again, with profound artistry, that he is a servant of that Messenger Wind.

Brian J. Walsh is a Christian Reformed Campus minister at the University of Toronto.

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