The thin line beyond which you really can’t fake.

Some Grateful Dead lyrics are easy to interpret. Perhaps the most classic example is from the song, Truckin’: “Sometimes the light’s all shining on me. Other times I can barely see.” It’s easy to identify with the universal human experience of going through times in our lives when everything is working, the path ahead clearly lit, followed by periods of confusion or frustration, the future dark and obscured. Simple. Straightforward.

At the other end of the spectrum are texts no less sacred to Deadheads, but more difficult if not impossible to decipher, seemingly bordering on the nonsensical. Virtually all of the lyrics to China Cat Sunflower fit this description, perhaps the most impressive specimen being, “Comic book colors on a violin river, crying Leonardo words from out a silk trombone.” The sole coherent extract from this passage is the citation of “Leonardo words,” which refers to the left-handed Leonardo Da Vinci’s talent for writing backwards, from right to left, thereby avoiding smudging the ink drying on the page. These writings came to be known as Leonardo Words.

The rest, such as why Leonardo words would appear crying “from out a silk trombone,” is completely subject to analysis by the listener, including the conclusion the Deadhead Cyclist came to in Chapter 13 of the book, “The Deadhead Cyclist,” that some Grateful Dead lyrics transcend rational explanation. The beauty of Robert Hunter’s poetry in this tune notwithstanding, the deeper meaning of this lyric is that it has no meaning. As such, its significance lies in the way it illustrates the inescapable truth that with unpredictable regularity there will be nonsense in life that defies explanation or logical interpretation.

The vast majority of Grateful Dead lyrics fall in the midst of these opposite ends of the continuum. As such, they require the listener to reflect deeply in coming to their very personal reading of the ultimate meaning (and often meanings). Such is the nature of poetry and, indeed, all art, as it is often said: Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Or, in the words of William Shakespeare (in “Love’s Labors Lost”), “Beauty is bought by judgment of the eye.” (Note: More from Shakespeare coming.)

In a previous post, I suggested there was deeper meaning to the lyric from the tune Bird Song, “She sang a little while and then flew on,” than merely the well-established reference to Janis Joplin. My interpretation was that we are all birds who “sing” in our unique way during the course of our lives for just a short time before we fly on. One reader commented, “It’s a song about Janis Joplin. I don’t think there’s deeper meaning than that.”

Okay. Fair enough. For this individual, the meaning behind Bird Song fits into the same category as the lyric from Truckin’ that we began with. Simple. Clear. Obvious. Black and white. But with that in mind, let’s examine a lyric from the 12/27/77 show at Winterland, my choice for This Week In Grateful Dead History. Somewhere in between “Sometimes the light’s all shining on me” and “Crying Leonardo words from out a silk trombone” is a provocative lyric from Fire on the Mountain that might cause even the most black and white oriented mind to pause and reflect.

The more that you give, the more it will take,

To the thin line beyond, which you really can’t fake.

This section from the third and final verse of the tune begs the question: What is meant by “the thin line beyond?” And then, of course, is the obvious follow up question: What is it that “you really can’t fake?” Perhaps some context will point us in the right direction.

Most of the analysis of Fire on the Mountain starts with an examination of the “long distance runner” character. Conventional wisdom suggests that this is a metaphor for the gruelling lifestyle of the touring musician having difficulty getting motivated to “get up, get off, get out of the door.” After all, right there in the first verse we learn that the subject of the story is “playing cold music on the barroom floor,” which I can tell you as a former gigging musician is often a less than desirable experience. Most importantly, though, our marathon man is drowning in laughter and “dead to the core.” It is this fake laughter and inner emptiness that provide our first glimpse into the nature of the “thin line beyond” as the portal to authenticity.

The second verse reveals a performer struggling behind the role he is playing (“takes all you got just to stay on the beat”), yearning for authenticity but soldiering on, largely in denial of the emotional peril that lies in wait (“almost ablaze, still you don’t feel the heat”). 

At this point we begin to understand that the narrator feels pity (“if mercy’s in business, I wish it for you”) for the plight of this representative of the human race who, like all of us, is mired within the role he is playing, dreaming of the moment when he (and we) can break free and live with authenticity (“more than just ashes when your dreams come true”). 

By the time we reach the penultimate verse, the narrator has become a champion for this conflicted individual and for all of us who suffer the loss of authenticity that is required to live in the material world (“you gave all you had, why you want to give more?”), and then issues a chilling, pivotal warning about a life guided by the role we play, rather than by our truest selves (“the more that you give, the more it will take”).

Ultimately, in the final words of the third verse, we are beseeched to transcend the roles we are called upon to play in life, to find “the thin line” that is drawn between who we are expected to be and who we truly are, and “really can’t fake.” It’s time to take off the masks we are wearing and have the courage to show our real selves.

In his play, “As You Like It,” William Shakespeare proposes a bleak model for the nature of the human experience:

All the world’s a stage,

And all the men and women merely players;

They have their exits and their entrances,

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages.

The “seven ages” are: the infant, the schoolboy, the lover, the soldier, the justice, the elder, and the dying.

The notion that we are all doomed to conform to an endless series of roles in life runs counter to the ideal that was established by the Hippie movement, and carried forward by the Grateful Dead. Indeed, this may be the band’s most powerful magnet. In Fire on the Mountain we are warned of the perils of living a fake life, governed by the roles we are asked to play by mainstream culture. Moreover, we are encouraged to identify the “thin line beyond” the roles we might play, and to cross that line to a life of authenticity.

This is a worthy aspiration, and one that has driven Deadheads to follow the band and the principles it has stood for for more than five decades. Most of us have had to straddle that “thin line” with one foot in the mainstream world – as lawyers, doctors, real estate agents, teachers, fathers, mothers, husbands, wives, daughters, sons, etc. – and the other foot outside of the mainstream in the world of our dreams, whatever that means to each unique individual. Often we are called upon to achieve a difficult balance between the necessary roles that we play and our truest identity.

My practice has always been to spend as much time as possible in the world of my dreams, and I recommend it wholeheartedly. If you spend too much time on the wrong side of that “thin line,” you risk losing yourself to the degree where you may never find your way back. In the words of Robert Hunter from the song, Althea: “There are things you can replace, and others you cannot.”

You’ll know when you begin to “feel the heat” of inauthenticity. Pay attention, for that moment when “you know this space is getting hot” is the right time to “weigh those things.