Take up and Read

By Bobby Neal Winters

The words of the Bible--the biblical idiom--are the glue that holds good literature together. This is true even in popular music.

This article started taking shape when my youngest daughter got a dog and named him “Cowboy.”  It planted an earworm in my brain that has been coming and going ever since.  There is a song by the Oak Ridge boys that begins:

She played tambourine with a silver jingle /

And she must have known the words to at least a million tunes /

But the one most requested by the man she knew as Cowboy /

Was the late night benediction at the Y'all Come Back Saloon

It has been my frequent companion for months.  As earworms go, I could have done worse, but I don’t want to speculate about that too long for obvious reasons.

When a song like this goes through my mind like this unbidden for such a long time, I start thinking about how it’s put together. What toolbox of words is the writer pulling from?

One thing I noticed right there in the beginning is that the author of this song assumes a certain familiarity with church services.  You need to know that a benediction consists of words of comfort said at the close of a service that is meant to send the congregants into the world with hope.

The songwriter is telling us that the Y’all Come Back Saloon is a church for the people who go there.  This theme is returned to later in the song when 

“...all the fallen angels and pinball playing rounders /

Stopped the games that they'd been playing for the losers’ evening prayer”

It is not uncommon for writers to pull from a religious or biblical idiom to construct their texts.  And it is not always used to propound an overtly pious theme.

Leonard Cohen did this all the time:  “I heard there was a secret chord that David played and it pleased the Lord”; 

“And everybody knows that you're in trouble /

Everybody knows what you've been through /

From the bloody cross on top of Calvary /

To the beach of Malibu /

Everybody knows it's coming apart /

Take one last look at this Sacred Heart /

Before it blows /

And everybody knows”

He was absolutely brilliant at it.

Once you start listening for it, you hear it in surprising places. In Bob Seger’s night moves, for instance:

We weren't in love, oh no far from it /

We weren't searchin’ for some pie in the sky summit/

We were just young and restless and bored/

Living by the sword.

One artist who has gone beyond drawing from biblical idiom into writing new books of the Bible is Bob Dylan. In his time, he has been a prophet. To me, “The Times they are a-changin’” reads like a chapter of Jeremiah;“Masters of War” is an imprecatory psalm; “Like a Rolling Stone” reads as if written to a latter-day Jezebel.

He could write like that because at some point he’d absorbed the Bible. He went from using it as a flavor to something much more powerful than that.  In his best work, even when the language isn’t explicitly there, the Bible still is.

The Beatles used explicitly religious in “Let it Be”:

When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me /

Speaking words of wisdom, let it be /

And in my hour of darkness, she is standing right in front of me /

Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

And let’s not forget the Rolling Stones:

Please allow me to introduce myself/

I'm a man of wealth and taste/

I've been around for a long, long year/

Stole many a man's soul and faith/

I was 'round when Jesus Christ/

Had his moment of doubt and pain/

Made damn sure that Pilate/

Washed his hands and sealed his fate

The language of religion and the Bible provide a common pool that can be drawn from.  As a writer you can use it to speak to a broad audience. It talks about important things in powerful ways.  

But as we grow ever more atomized as a people we are losing that common core, that common language.  People are not going to church; they are not going to Sunday school; we are having a second Tower of Babel, and we will get to a time when they will not understand what I just said there.

I do have hope. If nothing else, maybe our grandchildren will discover our music, and in order to understand it, will pick up a Bible.  They might hear the little voice tell them, “Take and read.”

Sorry about all the earworms.

Bobby Winters, a native of Harden City, Oklahoma, blogs at redneckmath.blogspot.com and okieinexile.blogspot.com. He invites you to “like'' the National Association of Lawn Mowers on Facebook. Search for him by name on YouTube. )