"Dreams are forever
Never say never"
The first shred of optimism shines through the gathering storm in a discarded pair of lines that yearned to start the second verse to "Boats Against The Current." The next four lines, however, return solidly back to an examination of the vulnerabilities and human frailties that make relationships akin to ships tossed about on stormy seas:
"But perfection is consuming
And it seems we're only human
After all
And we've both been takin' the fall"
Even though Eric once described "Boats Against The Current" as a "song to hang yourself by," it is a song that many people have found optimistic rather than pessimistic. Perhaps struggling with this dichotomy himself, Eric decided that starting the second verse with a blatant ray of hope was sending too much of a positive signal for the second verse of his love song S.O.S., so he abandoned the "never say never" idea and finalized the stanza by recalling a hint of optimism from days long passed rather than the present.
"I was a dreamer
You were a dreamer
But perfection is consuming
And it seems we're only human
After all
And we've both been takin' the fall"
Eric has undoubtedly painted a pretty bleak picture here. Starting with the opening strains of "Row, Row, Row Your Boat," the first two verses of the song pits the struggle to keep a relationship on course with the hope for happiness at the end of the journey as its reward. But is the effort needed to keep the boat afloat worth the effort if the reward never comes? And what of the optimism people swear they hear in the song's lyrics? Where is that light at the end of the tunnel that we're all looking for? Does unbridled hope for the future always lead to dashed dreams?
Coming up next…the chorus.
4 comments:
The first two lines do sound better the way they ended up - 'dreams are forever, never say never' is much too optimistic for this song.
Interesting - recently, I've been frequently noticing (probably because I'm looking more)that there are repeating ideas (and even lines) that run throughout EC's body of work.
For anyone not familiar with Eric's Geffen album - the song She Remembered has almost the same line he cut from Boats:
'Cause dreams are forever
And some things you never forget
That's a nice observation, lostcontrol. "She Remembered" is one of my favorite Eric tunes. It's very interesting that an early lyric from "Boats Against The Current" (another one of my faves) made it into one of the most stirring parts of the Geffen ballad.
I am not surprised by that tie-in but am really glad to find that ray of hope in the second verse. As for the similarities between this lyric and that lyric on "She Remembered", I've felt that the compositions solely by Eric on the Geffen LP (on the vinyl, one side was Eric's sole compositions, and the other side were not, which made this distinction one I felt was highly apparent) were like a mini-Boats2.
But in-between, there is that song on Change Of Heart, "Someday" which also seems to be that hopeful ray, of never say never.
I think it's interesting that Eric ended up taking that phrase "Dreams are forever" from "Boats" and placing it later into "She Remembered." In "Boats," "Dreams are forever"--coupled with the equally trite-but-true "Never say never"--would have functioned exactly the way I see it functioning--as just the kind of platitude people comfort themselves with when they see that something's going nowhere but for some reason or other, they don't want to admit it and give up. The patient is dead, but they keep trying the paddles anyway, not willing to face the truth. It's in that moment that people say things to themselves like "Never say never," "It ain't over 'til it's over," etc.
I've said it before and I'll say it again--unlike most of Eric's fans, I never saw the line "Dreams are forever and some things you never forget" as one of Eric's best lines, and it's probably the reason I'm not as crazy about "She Remembered" as most of his fans seem to be. I see "She Remembered" as a triumph of nostalgia over truth--the kind of truth that says "You can't go home again." But nostalgia sucks us in very easily, and we do want to believe we can go back and magically relive a past love. In that sense, "She Remembered" functions as sheer fantasy fulfillment. I guess I was never that crazy about sheer fantasy fulfillment!
The truthfulness of "Dreams are forever..." I don't question. But the originality of expression just isn't there. It's the freshness of expression that grabs me in Eric's songs--metaphors like "feelin' like an old newspaper blowin' down a windy street." But that's another song...
"I was a dreamer/You were a dreamer" may not have a freshness of expression, but it has a kind of plodding truthfulness to it that works really well in "Boats"--it sets the scene. Here are two people who desperately want to believe nothing is wrong in their relationship...but they both know that's not true. "But perfection is consuming" is a wonderful fresh phrase that describes the reason why. They're both working so hard to maintain the fantasy of a blissful, perfect love that their relationship is cracking at the seams. No acknowledgment of stress or strain is permitted to be admitted or worked upon. All effort and energy goes into maintaining a happy front. There is nothing left for working out the problems. Nothing but mindless optimism in the face of despair...which is where "But tomorrow, we'll run a little bit faster" comes in.
But that's for the next post, right? In the next post, I get to go on again about how I never saw those lines as sunny and hopeful the way other fans did!
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