Songlights for a New Start: Part One — featuring Peter Gabriel

Over several decades of writing online, I’ve published many different series of posts celebrating new songs — songs I’ve just discovered and want to share with the world. Those series have had various names. One short-lived version had the awful title of “Newsic.” (I apologize for that one.)

The latest series, which I started at Give Me Some Light (my former Substack journal), is called Songlights.

Since this is the first Songlights post here at the new jeffreyoverstreet.com, let’s change things up a bit.

Before we get to the new music, let’s revisit a classic.

If Steven Colbert ever asked me the question that he asks special guests about the one song that they would keep with them if they were only allowed one song, I would find that question almost impossible to answer. But I’d seriously consider this song.

This song is, for me, a prayer — one that I have been praying since high school, when the album that included it, Peter Gabriel's So, became a religious experience for me. It may seem like I'm holding a boombox over my head and blasting this song in your direction, but the fact is that I've loved this song even before young John Cusack did that very thing in the movie Say Anything.

I've heard some dubious claims about what Peter Gabriel had in mind when he wrote this song. Some say it was written for his daughter; others point to his romance with Rosanna Arquette. I don’t think he's ever been very specific about its inspiration. (If you find otherwise, let me know.)

Whatever the case — this song has never been, for me, a song to a crush, a lover, a family member, or a mentor. When I sing this song, I hear a song addressed to “Love.” I hear a song about loving Love itself. (This reminds me of a Bruce Cockburn lyric: “When you love Love / then Love loves you too.”) Thus, it is for me a sacred song, a song of worship. When I was young, I’d turn to this song if a girl broke my heart, and I would regain some clarity and focus. If I was afraid or confused, I would turn to this song. Today, when the world goes wrong — and it seems to be going wrong faster and faster these days — I often turn to this song.

When I say I believe in God, what I mean is that I believe in Love. I hope that you and I have that in common: We believe in Love. Money can’t buy us Love. Love makes the world go around. Love surrounds us, moves through us, and (with apologies to Obi-Wan Kenobi) “binds the galaxy together." That’s what I think it means to say that God is Love.

And when I sing this song, I’m singing it to the Great Mystery from which all things come, through whom all things live, and for whom all things exist. I’m singing this about — and for — “the Light, the heat” that I find in any beauty, any wisdom, any truth. The divine You in this song inspires me to be truthful, hopeful, faithful, generous, and creative. It is this Love, this Light that has helped me escape so many traps, so many lies, so many distortions. It is this light that illuminates and shines through all of the art that has become meaningful and life-giving to me.

And when we hear voices raised in other languages in the song’s finale, I cannot help but think of the story of Pentecost: The Holy Spirit moved over the assembly of Jesus’s followers, and they began praising God in many different languages. This gives the world a revelation that it is possible to find God/Love alive and at work within everything and everyone that Love has ever made. Every person regardless of gender, color, race, culture, or nation can receive and share this Love. No human institution can claim ownership of God. None of us can decide who can have access to God's grace. God is within us all, and God asks us to look for God within each other—even and especially the poor, the vulnerable, and those condemned by the hateful. No government, no law, no violence can part us from this immeasurable generosity. We all have experience in refusing to receive it and share it, and thus do ourselves and others deep harm. But Love never fails, forgiving endlessly, always offering grace until we surrender to it and know joy, full and true, at last.

“Oh, I want to be that complete / I want to touch the light, the heat I see / in Your eyes . . .”

Seek the Face of God — that is, the Face of Love. And one of the best places to find it is in the faces of your neighbors, of strangers. Sometimes the best place to find it is in their stories. Their art. Their poetry. Their songs.

This seems like the right place to start again, here on this new platform: a song that calls us all to seek whatever is good, whatever is true, whatever is beautiful, whatever is wise, whatever is worthy of praise.

If you're new to the Songlights series, I hope you enjoy it. And if you're a subscriber, I encourage you to post a comment below, sharing the song or songs that are inspiring you.

You can work backward by looking at the Songlights Archive list—currently available on the Music main page—or by clicking the Songlights tag attached to this post. I think you'll find a vast gallery of great songs there. I hope you'll find some new personal favorites there. And I hope you'll follow those discoveries to explore the broader work of the artists represented there.

But wait, there’s more! Read Part Two of “Songlights for a New Start.”