Cathedral Song Lyrics

[Dona Vansoest]

Cathedral Song" is a song by English singer-songwriter Tanita Tikaram, released as a single from her debut album, Ancient Heart (1988). It peaked at #48 in the UK.[2] An extended length music video was made from the song, portraying a love story between two swimmers in a Summer setting. The video was shot in black and white, and Tikaram appears only in studio footage, not on the external footage. Most of the music video was filmed in Portugal, in Praia Grande, Praia do Guincho, Estoril and Cristo Rei sanctuary.

Upon its release, Jerry Smith of Music Week praised it as a "wonderfully effective, dreamy ballad, with breathy vocal and complimentary sparse backing" that "deserves wide exposure".[3] William Shaw of Smash Hits wrote, "It's a pleasant enough tune; a dreamy, floaty thing, full of haunting organs and guitar pluckings. But, if like me you spend all your time wondering what Tanita is singing about, then the sepulchral beauty of the whole thing kind of passes you by."[4]

The song was covered by Brazilian singer Zlia Duncan. Her version, which has a similar arrangement but lyrics in Portuguese, was released in her second homonymous album (1994) and became a smash hit in Brazil. Her version (titled simply "Catedral") was also covered by Leandro from Leandro e Leonardo and by Renato Russo from Legio Urbana.

Fantastic song about the reality of religion, although people may try as they may to do the whole "peace thing" people are constantly slipping up and failing. If you really want to live in Christ's image and be a true Christian you must go against the killing, the lieing and all the problems and embrace the idea of working fro the kingdom by living in Christ's image. This song spells out what all Christians should be.

I absolutely love this song - the lyrics, the vocalization, the music, and the message - it all resonates very powerfully for me with respect to my own dissolution with Christianity due to lies, hypocrisy, the Inquisition, rape, pillaging, and plundering during the Crusades in the name of Christ, and lack of connection with the Earth. In that respect, Cathedral reminds me very much of The Garden of Love, a poem by William Blake.

Great song about religious disillusionment and what being a Christian truly means. The "too many people..." part is fairly straightforward, it's the part about standing on the grave of the dead soldier that seems a bit more abstract...I have no idea what that part means actually...

Oh, how sad we were, all the time, back then. Everything felt very bleak and very sad. We were so broke, all my friends and me, and it seemed like we had few prospects. I was working at a pizza place in Portland; Carson was cocktail waitressing in the Bay. Our circumstances lent themselves to particularly morose lyric-writing, as evidenced here.

This was before Carson and I were a couple. When we were just friends, with our own separate hardluck stories about love affairs gone wrong and crushes unrequited. She was infatuated with this guy who lived in her warehouse who had a motorcycle and he would ride her around the city on the back of it.

And then we packed up and left; we drove through the night from San Francisco to Portland, myself and our friend Nathan in his truck and Carson in her Honda Civic. We arrived at dawn in Portland and moved her into this warehouse where we were all living, a warehouse that had formerly been a poultry slaughter house, where at night, if you listened closely, you could hear the ghosts of those chickens, rattling their chicken chains.

Grace Cathedral hill2

All wrapped in bones of setting sun3

All dust and stone and moribund4

I paid twenty-five cents to light a little white candle5

For a New Year's Day

I sat and watched it burn away

Then turned and weaved through slow decay

We were both a little hungry so we went to get a hot dog6

Down the Hyde Street Pier

The light was slight and disappeared

The air it stunk of fish and beer

We heard a Superman trumpet

Play the National Anthem7

And the world may be long for you

But he'll never belong to you

But on a motorbike8

When all the city lights

Blind your eyes tonight9

Are you feeling better now?10

Are you feeling better now?

Are you feeling better now?

Some way to greet the year:

Your eyes all bright and brimmed with tears11

The pilgrims, pills, and tourists here

All sing \\\"Fifty-three bucks to buy a brand new halo.\\\"12

I'm sweet on a green-eyed girl13

All fiery Irish clip and curl

All brine and piss and vinegar14

I paid twenty-five cents to light a little white candle15

Chorus

This song was written in 2001 \u2014 in February of 2001 to be exact. I know this because it happens that, at that time, Carson (of Slowpoke fame) was doing this weird practice of minutely journaling every moment of her day for a week, and it happened to be the week that I wrote this song. There\u2019s a couple mentions of the song in her journal; I guess I played it a few times for her during the course of the week. Back then, I didn\u2019t really have a home recording setup, so I would often resort to just playing a song over and over till it was lodged in my memory. No demo exists of the song; I would\u2019ve just taught it to the band during rehearsals. The title is a deliberate crib of The Red House Painters\u2019 song \u201CGrace Cathedral Park\u201D which was (and remains) one of my most favorite songs of all time. The song itself is a pretty straightforward account of the activities of a single day during a trip I took to San Francisco around New Years, 2000-2001, to visit Carson and help her move to Portland.

I think I\u2019d only been to San Francisco a few times prior to this trip. I hadn\u2019t made it to Grace Cathedral, even though, because of the RHP song, it was lodged pretty doggedly in my imagination. I think this was the trip that I convinced Carson to accompany me up the hill to visit the cathedral. It was New Year\u2019s Day, 2001.

This reads as \u201CAll wrapped in th\u2019 bones of a setting sun\u201D in the original lyric sheet; I think I sneak a \u201Cth\u2019\u201D into the line when I sing it live, but the articles are all gone in the recording. Never quite scanned. I liked the lazier swing of the line without them.

Incidentally (and I have told this story many times), Carson worked briefly as a hot dog vendor on the Hyde Street Pier in San Francisco. Famously, she nearly set the pier on fire when, as customers were approaching, she absently flicked a cigarette to the ground. A cart patron \u2014 a little kid, I seem to remember \u2014 saw the smoke billowing up from the wooden beams of the pier and hollered FIRE! Carson, in a moment of inspiration, grabbed the bucket of hot dog water from the cart and extinguished the inferno, just as the fire brigade was arriving. She was proclaimed a hero; she had her picture taken with the fire fighters and the kid. I haven\u2019t seen this photo, but I imagine it exists somewhere. In my mind I see it: there is still a little tendril of smoke coming up from the pier, just behind the hot dog cart, and there\u2019s twenty-something Carson, with her baggy cargo pants and tanktop, grinning alongside a half dozen beefy firefighters in their helmets and suspenders. And right in front is this cherubic kid, this smiling boy, and in his right hand is a hot dog all slathered with mustard.

I\u2019m not sure if this is a faded memory, or if it\u2019s a real thing \u2014 but I *think* there was a busker, a trumpet player, down there on the pier as we were wandering, looking for a hot dog, and he was playing The Star Spangled Banner and he was dressed in a Superman costume. I\u2019ve never received any kind of affirmation from San Franciscans that this was, in fact, a thing \u2014 that in the early aughts, there was a guy who would loiter the Hyde Street Pier playing songs on his trumpet, one of those songs being the National Anthem, while dressed as Superman. Perhaps one of you could disabuse me of this hallucination.

This song is not so much about me, about my trip to San Francisco as the year 2000 tipped over into the year 2001, but about Carson and her relationship to this city, this city that she loved so much but was also so ready to leave. It\u2019s also a pretty great portrait of our friendship at the time. We were always together, we were always happiest together.

Another half-borrowed line, this one from The Innocence Mission. Their 1999 record \u201CBirds of My Neighborhood\u201D was one that both Carson and I loved and listened to a lot around that time. I don\u2019t know if I consciously cribbed the line from them, or if it just found its way in without me realizing it, but it must\u2019ve been halfway birthed from the last line of chorus of \u201CYou Are The Light\u201D: Are you feeling better than before? Now that I think about it (and I\u2019m listening to \u201CYou Are The Light\u201D now and remembering this time), I imagine that my inclusion of this line might\u2019ve been a very intentional call back to The Innocence Mission, as a kind of bond Carson and I shared in that record. Are you feeling better now?

This was a friend of Carson\u2019s \u2014 a coworker, I think \u2014 that I was crushed out on. But I think I\u2019d only every met her once or twice, and I don\u2019t think I would see her again after this trip. The infatuation was brief and it left as soon as it came, as so often they did then.

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