About "In the sky"

[nababo]

After the huge success of discussing "Back to Tupelo", our everpresent camerado Love Expresso suggested that we try to cast some lights at "In the sky", "Kill to get crimson" closing song.

So here we go.

My first thought about the song is that MK was trying to emulate Van Morrison's style. I think he got it.

About the lyrics, ItS lies in the sea, a recurring theme in Mark's career, from "Down to the waterline" and "Single-handed sailor" onwards.

But I'm going to far. Anyone?

[Love Expresso]

My biggest problem is who might be addressed as "soul balladeer".

Also this verse

And the hard-bitten stranger
as deaf as a post
who stands at the fire
where a poet's dreams roast
He can't know the story,
he can't feel the pain
and all of the glory
falls around him like rain
in the sky
in the sky

has obviously a very concrete moment. The first two ones COULD be about a song, not a person. In fact, Mark said more than once that songs are like children, little people, they grow up and go out of the house. And sometimes or suddenly they come back. The same with song meanings - when he lets them go, the audience makes them their own.
Another theory: It is indeed about one of his boys (or both) who starts maybe songwriting, goes out into the land of lyrics and poetry and sometimes gets hurt or has to learn a lot of stuff the hard way.  Or he has some great ideas he thinks and they maybe don't turn out to be so great. And Mark maybe sees himself in this young man and remembers how he felt when he began writing songs and grow up as a Musician..


And then again, I don't understand WHO is strong as a rope and a light in the dark. These words doesn't fit to t father-son relationship. So different perspectives again here? That was what made me bringing up the idea of talking about In The Sky

LE

[Love Expresso]

"Everpresent"?? Wtf.. 

LE

[foma]

Oh please guys, can you discuss The Ragpickers Dream? I listen it for decade almost every day without even trying to understand it

[ingridswing]

Sure Foma, please feel free to start another topic for Ragpickers. Not smart to do 2 songs in one topic, it's hard enough to understand already 

[H97]

Just want to say I love the song and that I love that it's longer than 5 minutes. 

[Lestroid]

In the Sky is one of those songs that I haven't really paid attention to.  I consider that to be my failing, not MK's.  There have been many instances where it took me a while to come around to a song and then realize that it has become one of my favorites...

Since the thread on Back to Tupelo generated so many intelligent responses, I thought I should give In the Sky a good listen and take a look at the lyrics on the liner notes.

Nababo, you mentioned that the song is in the style of Van Morrison, and I can definitely imagine his voice singing the song!  Never thought about that before.

My first thought of the lyrics is that it sounds like a wife talking to her husband as he returns from a journey.  Or a parent talking to a son.  But rather than a physical journey, it sounds like the soul balladeer has returned from his trip into his own creative mind.  Maybe it's like saying to someone  who has a faraway look in their eyes "A penny for your thoughts".

So  maybe the narrator is the wife of a writer (songwriter, artist, etc) talking to him after he returns from the far away place in his own head.

Anyway, that's my first thought.  Will give it some more listens and think about it some more.  I'm sure there will be some other interesting interpretations.
   

[Hophead]

Seems to me that he is referring to a writer..."No crotchets or quavers in your books"...a novelist..not a songwriter. There are many nautical references in the song. Could it be about his favorite author...Patrick O'Brian?

[nababo]

Seems to me that he is referring to a writer..."No crotchets or quavers in your books"...a novelist..not a songwriter. There are many nautical references in the song. Could it be about his favorite author...Patrick O'Brian?

So maybe he's been talking about his own wife, Kitty. Could it be possible? He had already made kind of an entire album to her, and sparsely songs in other albuns were meant to her ("Our Shangri-La", among others).
As Love Expresso pointed out, expressions like "light in the dark", "beacon of hope" "strong as a rope" do not fit in any kind of relationship, but go well in a love relation in which one admires the other. It's not a love song, though. It's a song about respect, esteem, and also about saudade, hence he celebrates the returning of the subject from a trip - "from the sea". And she's the one who touches his soul.

[JF]

I remember some years ago someone here on rthis forum syaing that this song was about Kitty.

So I guess that Lestroid's point of view about a wife talking to her husband could fit

[Love Expresso]

But it does not fit with the way the husband is described - Mark would never let someone talk about him in this big headed way 

I still think it is more about something theoretical - songwriting, or inspiration, being inspired for example, and not so much about a concrete person. And maybe Mark describes himself as the hard-bitten stranger. Someone has been away into his own inner world of ideas and inspiration and comes back to reality... and as a songwriter himself, the narrator knows the feeling of being inspired - or sometimes not being inspired. So the ideas fly around, inspiration comes and goes. The inspiration then could be the beacon of hope and strong as a rope etc. The feeling of confidence that it will work out at the end because the song WANTS to be created.. something that way...

LE

[yontwocrows]

I didn't pay attention to song as well and didn't listen a lot to the whole album, which is strange, because i liked it when i first listened to it. But Privateering i listened over and over, KTGC not!  So i'm very thankful that LE urges me to listen to the song closer. Result: I LOVE this song! It's beautiful, very poetic! But it's a real challenge to get to a feeling of deeper understanding. I think at first we really have to - what you have already done - collect all possible connotations this song evolve and compare, every hint is necessary. The range of possibilities is just too wide!

- Has Mark or a bandmate in an interview ever spoken about this song? If somebody knows something, every hint is welcome!

Ok, some brainstorming:
Who/What is the soul balladeer? What is the difference between a balladeer and a soul balladeer?
a.) It can be kind of a nickname for a real person you love,
b.) it can be a figurative expression for sth (feelings, dreams, process of writing, thinking, singing, reading etc.)  which has effects on the soul like a balladeer on a real person.
c.) a soul singer

If it is a.)
Somebody is coming home. Been long time away. Not everything was easy. Person is courageous. Is sailing on a boat he made (Reminds me on the privateering-metaphor). If soul balladeer is a musician he didn't write the music (No crotchets or quavers in your books) but maybe is playing it instinctively (straight in the vain / like a bird on his own flight in his domain in the sky). hard-bitten strangers = fans who listen to music, but don't know the background? / Beacon of hope, light in the dark = the person to whom the balladeer is coming home? He ties up his boat (the whole tour stuff) in a haven? Other person is the rope? (As strange as a rope)? As important as the boat?

If it is b.) 
Could be a song (like a bird on his own flight?) / composer (And the hard-bitten stranger (composer himself?) as deaf as a post
who stands at the fire where a poet

[yontwocrows]

So, this is what the song does to me. It's only one possibility of reading, i know, that there are more. The reading with Mark coming home to Kitty...well, for me it's a little bit too concrete and too personal. But of course i think that the experience of homecoming is part of the song.

In the sky
The song

[Lestroid]

After listening some more and reading some of the other ideas, I'm beginning to think that Yon Two Crows is on the right track.  The narrator is Mark and the "soul balladeer" is his inner song writer, who seems to function independently, free from the things that hold him here on dry land.  The verse about the "hard bitten stranger" seems to be the audience or at least that part of the audience that, like me, just ignores the song. 

Something interesting struck me when I looked at the liner notes - As I scanned the booklet looking for "In the Sky", I cast my eyes upon the opening line of Madame Geneva's which is on the opposite page.  "I'm a writer of ballads right pretty".  It seems to correspond to the "soul balladeer".  But whereas "Madame Geneva's" is a very dark song that seems to be about someone suffering from depression, haunted by inner demons, who is drowning his sorrows in gin", "In the Sky" is a very optimistic song.  It ends with the verse that starts "You're a light in the dark, a beacon of hope".  I don't think it is an accident that the two songs are juxtaposed, or that the album ends with a song of hope.  I seem to recall Mark saying in an interview that he is an optimist...

[Love Expresso]

The narrator is Mark and the "soul balladeer" is his inner song writer, who seems to function independently, free from the things that hold him here on dry land.  The verse about the "hard bitten stranger" seems to be the audience or at least that part of the audience that, like me, just ignores the song. 

For me, that's it! Thank you so much. After many years of thinking about it  - really, I can't listen to this song, I really can't, without skipping back and listen once more and more, because I tend to get un-relaxed because I want to know more about the lyrics. It was the KEY that was missing for me. Now it seems I have it! Thank you so much again, Yontwocrows and Lestroid, god bless the day you decided to get members of AMIT! 

And it is SO obivous! Are you home from the sea MY soul balladeer - Mark tells us - we just have to see it! 
 

LE