As the clock winds down on 2023
A song by Jim Page
Hi all,
Thank you for joining me for this week’s song, “Clock Winds Down”, written by Jim Page, sung by Christy Moore. If you’d like to hear the song before you read the discussion, I’ve included a YouTube video with the lyrics below the article.
Below, you’ll find my interpretation of the lyrics (written in italics). Comments and questions are welcome. For Japanese students, vocabulary words in bold are provided in Japanese below. TOEFL (PBT) 450+, Eiken 2, CEFR B1.
Coming to the end of the year
(476 words)
As this is one of the last posts for this year, I tried to find some songs related to countdowns. I found this one and thought it was appropriate. Today’s song takes a look at our relationship to the planet Earth. The singer makes observations about the things we have or, more importantly, have not - done to take care of the environment.
At the beginning, he is speechless: It’s hard to know what to say / As the world around us fades away
We can reason, we have logic, and there is good evidence that human beings are responsible for the serious changes in our climate, but that information just falls on deaf ears, meaning no one listens or pays attention. And the truth dissolves and disappears / As the clock winds down
We had many Warning signs years ago but We did not want to know.
Instead, we continued in our All consuming selfish ways of endless shopping, use of cars, air travel, producing too much, and Now there’s a price to pay. This means our actions have consequences. For example, The ice caps melt, The Amazon burns / To the point of no return
At some point, we may lose what we have. If for some reason, we should lose electricity, The (electrical) grid goes down / (our computer ) Screens go blank, and We’ll be walking down the plank. “Walking the plank” is a kind of punishment that pirates use (in popular fiction and movies). If someone on the ship has done something very bad such as mutiny, he is forced to walk along a long board (plank) sticking out from the ship. The person then has no choice but to jump or is forced to fall into the sea. This is a metaphor to describe a situation where someone faces serious consequences.
Children leading the way
See the children take to the streets
When they hear Greta Thunberg speak
Greta, of course, if the young woman who has been fighting for years for action on the global climate crisis.*
Watch the young warriors climb down from the trees
Chain themselves to machinery
For over 20 years, environmental activists have taken action to defend old-growth trees from being cut down. These activists are from a variety of countries such as New Zealand, France, the UK, the United States, Canada, and Australia. They often climb the trees and stay there for several days. They sometimes chain themselves to bulldozers or other equipment used to pull down trees in order to stop the destruction.
In the last verse, the singer feel remorse for not having dong more to stop the destruction of the environment.
It’s hard to know what to say / When a child looks up and says
Hey old man, what did you do / We were depending on you
Now the clock winds down… to zero
Question:
In your culture, what do people do to mark the end of the year? The end of a decade? The end of an era?
VOCABULARY
observation 観察
speechless 無言
reason 推論する
logic 論理
evidence 証拠
dissolve 溶かす
selfish わがまま
consequences 結果
melt 溶ける
mutiny 反乱
old-growth trees/forest 原生林
destruction 破壊
remorse 後悔
The complete lyrics are in the notes section on YouTube.
*To hear Greta speaking on climate action, see my article from earlier this year:
Very powerful lyrics at a time when there's so much apathy. A majority of our politicians exhibit anemic responses to this existential threat. They are in my experience unresponsive to even listening to sound reason unless they see something in it for them - think short-sighted manifestations of greed.