GREG RAY: Songs to live your life by

I don’t remember what his suggestions were, except the main one he recommended with special fervour. 

That was The Impossible Dream, from the musical, Man of La Mancha. I never pictured Watto as a Don Quixote type, but maybe I never really knew him properly.

You don’t have to be a Don Quixote to appreciate the song, or even to be stirred by it. Some of those lines by Joe Darion are stirring. To try, when your arms are too weary,

To reach, the unreachable star. And:

 To fight for the right, without question or pause,

To be willing to march into Hell for a Heavenly cause.

I know the song pretty well, since it was one of my Dad’s repertoire of shower serenades for many years

Now he’s in a choir he regales his audiences with it at the drop of a hat. Does a fair job of it too, though maybe not as good as Robert Goulet.

After years of not writing the column Watto requested so long ago I thought last night the time might finally have come. 

It came from listening to my daughter singing one of my Mum’s favourite songs – which she’d learnt especially for the occasion. Mum’s always had a soft spot for The Gambler, that old Kenny Rogers ballad about the poker-faced card player on the midnight train.

Employing poker-playing as a sound metaphor for life in general, the gambler advises his fellow-traveller, in return for some whiskey and smokes, that:

You’ve got to know when to hold ’em,

Know when to fold ’em,

Know when to walk away,

Know when to run.  And:

You never count your money,

When you’re sitting at the table,

There’ll be time enough for countin’

When the dealing’s done.

I like so many songs in so many different styles, and different ones seem to suit me best on different days.

What about Steer, by Missy Higgins? Great message: 

You finally know you can control where you go,

You can steer.

Other people have suggested a few to me.

What a Wonderful World, by Louis Armstrong offers a nice reminder about the things that really matter, which is always handy.

The Beatles All You Need is Love puts it nicely too. After all:

Nothing you can know that isn’t known,

Nothing you can see that isn’t shown,

Nowhere you can be that isn’t where you’re meant to be,

It’s easy . . .

Other people have recommended Tim Rice’s lyrics in Circle of Life, from the musical, The Lion King and it’s easy to see why. 

From the day we arrive on the planet,

And blinking, step into the sun,

There’s more to see than can ever be seen,

More to do than can ever be done.

There’s far too much to take in here,

More to find than can ever be found.

But the sun rolling high

Through the sapphire sky

Keeps great and small on the endless round.

They are all fine songs, and anybody could do worse than to take their messages as some kind of guiding star for living.

As Watto and my Dad might sing:

This is my quest, to follow that star,

No matter how hopeless, no matter how far.

Somebody once asked me to nominate a song I’d like to have played at my own funeral. It’s not a thought I’m comfortable with, but at the moment I think I’d probably pick Leonard Cohen’s If it be Your Will.

Cohen says it was an old prayer it came to him to rewrite:

If it be your will, that I speak no more,

That my voice be still, as it was before,

I will speak no more, I shall abide until,

I am spoken for, if it be your will.

If it be your will, that a voice be true,

From this broken hill, I will sing to you.

From this broken hill, all your praises they shall ring, if it be your will, to let me sing.

About that song Cohen wrote: ‘‘There is a moment when we have to transcend the side we’re on and understand that we are creatures of a higher order’’.

I’d like to be able to do that, before I die.