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The Day

from Hemingway by Accoustic Michigan

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CLICK THE ARROW ABOVE TO PLAY THE SONG

At five years old I was standing in the living room of John, a World War I veteran and family acquaintance. He talked in the most animated manner I had ever seen. He said to someone, "Did you here? "H" shot himself!". I had no idea who John was talking about. Perhaps a friend of his. Someone who's name that started with an H. I had no idea who. I didn't catch the name. John went on to say about "H" such things as that he was injured in his leg during World War I and was in a plane crash.


Many years later as I was doing some reading it washed over me that it was the death of Earnest Hemingway that was being discussed when I was a child. So I wrote a song about that day called "The Day."

I started reading the Nick Adams stories. While reading the second Nick Adams story I had a moment of euphoria. It dawned on me what Hemingway was doing. His message was in story form. The life cycle of a man. Nick in his formative years. The characters along the way, culminating in Santiago, who finally understands the meaning of it all. Now, I try to make others understand. But you can only experience those euphoric discoveries through your own purposeful learning. So these incidental moments have culminated in this album.

Hemingway footnoted Ecclesiastes, in contemporary terms. The struggle of a man to understand the meaning of life, Santiago finally does. He goes out too far. He must kill his friend in order to be redeemed. It is the only answer. It is the Gospel in letters too large to see.

lyrics

The Day

I can still recall the day,
Earnest Hemingway went away.
The breathless talk of what he’d done.
As the father so the son.

After all of these years.
The words still ringing in my ears.
Just when they said that he’s all through,
The Pulitzer and Nobel too.

He wrote of life under the sun.
The 20th Century Solomon.
And too explained it in the end,
Through Santiago and his friend.

The Gospel writ to large to see.
The truth for all humanity.
His other self would never die.
The irony makes you want to cry.

The silence of a dozen years,
Days of youth just disappears.
Decades more clear out of sight,
Until Up North roots come to light.

I can still recall the day,
Earnest Hemingway went away.


Hemingways Near Death Experience:

http://www.iands.org/nde-stories/17-nde-accounts-from-beyond-the-light.html

http://www.timelesshemingway.com/content/idealizedself

credits

from Hemingway, released January 1, 2012

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Accoustic Michigan Mount Pleasant, Michigan

These songs reflect Great Lakes themes. They include Tall Ships, Shipwrecks, Hemingway, and an album about about people and place of Michigan called Michigama.

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