Heaven Can Wait

I was looking for something to refresh the type of music I've been listening to via the Spotify A.I. algorithms and ended up listening to Meatloaf, Bat Out of Hell again. This album can impart upon my experience... memories, flavour, feeling, perfume - these words don't quite capture the nature of a charge, not particularly strong but there and of teenage years and time with a friend who introduced me to Meatloaf's music. He was as straight as they come and I'd no erotic feelings towards him. The charge isn't painful or longing and isn't anything more than the imprint of largely ok times but they were times sat in the midst of a lot of complexities. Anyway, what has prompted me to write isn't this charge. It's the track Heaven Can Wait which moved me to write. Jim Steinman's lyrics might be read as say poetry and would be enough cause for reflection but add the music and I'm moved to tears.

Heaven can wait
And a band of angels wrapped up in my heart
Will take me through the lonely night
Through the cold of the day
And I know, I know
Heaven can wait
And all the Gods come down here just to sing for me
And the melody is gonna make me fly
Without pain, without fear
Give me all of your dreams
And let me go alone on your way
Give me all of your prayers to sing
And I'll turn the night into the skylight of day
I've got a taste of paradise
I'm never gonna let it slip away
I got a taste of paradise
That's all I really need to make me stay
Just like a child again
Heaven can wait
And all I got is time until the end of time
Well, I won't look back, I won't look back
Let the altar shine
And I know that I've been released
But I don't know to where
Nobody's gonna tell me now
And I don't really care, no, no, no
I've got a taste of paradise
It's all I really need to make me stay
I got a taste of paradise
If I had it any sooner, you know
You know I never would have run away from my home
Heaven can wait
And all I got is time until the end of time
Well, I won't look back, I won't look back
Let the altar shine
Heaven can wait
Ah, Heaven can wait
Well, I won't look back, I won't look back
Let the altars shine
Let the altars shine

Now, many have commented upon the meaning of these lyrics and writers don't always have a clear meaning but I think what I find moving is as follows. They might depict someone who has had a transformative experience of love. This love could be anywhere on an axis from romantic projection with potent sexual energy through established sexual relationship, an asexual love, an opening in life to purpose and meaning with a sense of belonging and value, the love of being alive, right through to 'religious' / metaphysical experience. Whatever, they've all passed and the transformation remains. Now, even if I consider that Steinman wrote these lyrics for the musical Neverland and put a Peter Pan lens in front of them, I'm still moved. Afterall, J.M. Barrie's Neverland alludes to our deepest desires.

What is moving is that the transformation is to a place of acceptance. The suffering of the past is gone, there's nothing but time until the end of time, the transforming ecstasy has passed and taken with it the suffering. Any pain now can only be pain and not drive suffering. The axis from earthly ecstasy as a glimpse of eternity to the eternal is drawn out for us and the sorrows of the past rendered foundation for peace. The striving and desperation are gone. There's release, it doesn't seem important to where. For now, time remains but it will end. When it ends there will be no loss. No loss of pleasure or suffering.

Our lives are driven by our desires and our desires by our lives. And we all return to the Red Thread koan - the left hand path (of spiritual practice) or the right. There's plenty in the lyrics to point to sex as a vehicle to spiritual experience but they need not be read that way and other vehicles to paradise are clearly there too.

I got a taste of paradise
If I had it any sooner, you know
You know I never would have run away from my home

Home to ourselves as incarnated beings... with all that entails.

Well, I won't look back, I won't look back
Let the altars shine
Let the altars shine

For me these closing lines place a foot both sides of eternity. Each of us finding our own altars as reflections of our true nature.

Lest we get too detached from our earthly musings it's good to remember the humour in the next set of lyrics by Steinman:

On a hot summer night, would you offer your
Throat to the wolf with the red roses?
Yes
I bet you say that to all the boys...