With nearly 10,000 songs on my iPod, still at only 50% capacity, you might expect that my selection of tunes is fairly diverse, and you would be correct.  However, when it comes to the songs to which I typically choose to listen, the selection narrows quite a bit.  There are certain songs/albums/artists that I have no problem listening to repeatedly, and at the moment those songs are found on the 10,000 Maniacs album Our Time In Eden.  I haven’t spent any time trying to figure out why that is:  it could be Robert Buck’s jangly guitar, or Natalie Merchant’s delicate yet strong vocals, Jerome Augustyniak’s pronounced snare and hi-hat, or the JB Horns, or the profound lyrics, or maybe it is all of those things and more.  I like the design and coloration of the album cover.  It’s hard to believe that the album was released 18 years ago, that I bought the CD so long ago, at a very different point in my life from where I am today.

We are the roses in the garden, beauty with thorns among our leaves.  To pick a rose you ask your hands to bleed.  What is the reason for having roses when your blood is shed carelessly?  It must be for something more than vanity.

Believe me, the truth is we`re not honest, not the people that we dream.  We`re not as close as we could be.  Willing to grow but rains are shallow.  Barren and wind-scattered seed on stone and dry land, we will be.  Waiting for the light arisen to flood inside the prison.  And in that time kind words alone will teach us, no bitterness will reach us.  Reason will be guided another way.

All in time, but the clock is another demon that devours our time in Eden, in our Paradise.  Will our eyes see well beneath us, flowers all divine?  Is there still time?  If we wake and discover in life a precious love, will that waking become more heavenly?

I did get the chance to see 10,000 Maniacs perform on a hot summer evening at the Tower Theatre in 1989, with some of my very best friends; the show was good, and the evening was memorable.  Natalie left the Maniacs after Our Time In Eden, and recently released Leave Your Sleep, which along with Motherland is the only solo album of Natalie’s that I own. 

I’m not sure where I’m going with this – it seemed to make sense as a perfectly good post topic earlier tonight.  I guess I could have simply written “I like Our Time in Eden” but that doesn’t seem to be quite adequate.