| Lord Jesus, I know I am a sinner. I am lost without Your intercession and I cannot make it by myself. But Your undying Word assures me that if I cling to Your promise, then all that is seen as unseen will someday be revealed. I know, Lord, that if I believe in You and Your promises, that you can make sense out of Gary Kemp’s lyrics. If it be Your will, kindly do so, for me and for the readers of Last Plane to Jakarta. Because, as for me, I cannot. I am afraid, and I am confused. I do not know what he’s talking about when he says “We made our love on wasteland,” and what’s more, “and through the barricades” does not seem like a reasonable rejoinder, no matter what he might mean by the first part of the line. I hear the tremendous, genuine beauty of the melody, the nearly flawless structure of the verses and choruses, the studied economy of Tony Hadley’s phrasings, and they break my heart. They do. They are as fine and worthy as any balladry I know, but their lyrics are gobbledygook that just sound like they must make sense. “I thought we were the human race,/but we were just another borderline case” -- honestly, patient hours of prayerful reflection have failed, and failed quite completely, in trying to make any sense of it at all. I hear the melody and I respond at a very real emotional level; the words resonate somehow within me, and I want to cling to them; they are meaningless, and clinging to them is as possible as grabbing hold of the fog or standing on a cloud. |