Look out of any window1
any morning, any evening, any day
Maybe the sun is shining
birds are winging or
rain is falling from a heavy sky—
What do you want me to do,
to do for you to see you through?
this is all a dream we dreamed
one afternoon long ago2
Walk out of any doorway
feel your way, feel your way
like the day before
Maybe you’ll find direction
around some corner
where it’s been waiting to meet you—
What do you want me to do,
to watch for you while you’re sleeping?
Well please don’t be surprised
when you find me dreaming, too
Look into any eyes
you find by you, you can see
clear through to another day
I know it’s been seen before
through other eyes on other days
while going home —3
What do you want me to do,
to do for you to see you through?
It’s all a dream we dreamed
one afternoon long ago
Walk into splintered sunlight
Inch your way through dead dreams4
to another land
Maybe you’re tired and broken
Your tongue is twisted
with words half spoken
and thoughts unclear
What do you want me to do
to do for you to see you through?
A box of rain will ease the pain5
and love will see you through
Just a box of rain
wind and water
believe it if you need it
if you don’t just pass it on
Sun and shower, wind and rain
in and out the window
like a moth before the flame6
It’s just a box of rain
I don’t know who put it there
Believe it if you need it
or leave it if you dare
But it’s just a box of rain
or a ribbon for your hair
Such a long, long time to be gone
and a short time to be there7
Words by Robert Hunter
Music by Phil Lesh
Bruce Hornsby recorded a song called “Look Out Any Window” on his 1988 Scenes from the Southside album.
Compare to the line in “Stella Blue”: “It seems like all this life / was just a dream.”
The title of a book by Michelle Carter (Morrow, 1987).
The title of a book by Lewis Sanders, Dead Dreams: Under Eternity with the Grateful Dead, A Mythological History (1998).
This exchange appeared in Hunter’s mailbag on August 6, 1996:
From: (Charles E. Bass)
Dear Robert,
After reading through a number of mailbags posted at your website, I finally decided that it was time to contribute a thought and a question.
Between your evocative, thoughtful lyrics and Jerry’s powerful melodies, I have aphorisms and meditations aplenty to help me through my days and in my life. For that, thank you, thank you, thank you.
I sat down the other day and figured out the chord changes to “Mission in the Rain.” My wife (who is not a Deadhead) especially likes that song. Maybe it is because we live in San Francisco and there is a reference to the Mission. When I play it she always starts dancing.
Robert, if you would, please tell me what you were thinking when you penned the phrase “box of rain.” What, for you, does a box of rain represent? I am not asking for the meaning of the song, or for you to explain the song to me—I spent plenty of time on my own doing that. I am just terribly curious how you came to choose that image.
Well, I won’t take any more bandwith. There is much I would like to say, but I’ve said it in my mind for so long now, it feels funny and self-conscious trying to put it onto “paper.”
Regards,
Charlie Bass
Hunter replied:
Charlie,
Well, I don’t like to do this, since it encourages others to ask about what I had in mind when I wrote a song, and mostly you’d need to have my mind to understand even approximately what I had in it. By “box of rain,” I meant the world we live on, but “ball” of rain didn’t have the right ring to my ear, so box it became, and I don’t know who put it there.
[RH] 43
This line resonates with several proverbial and poetic snippets:
“The fate of the moth in the flame”—Aeschylus, Fragments (Fragment no. 288)
Another old Greek proverb is “Rejoicing with the moth’s joy” as it flutters about the candle that will consume it.
A Chinese proverb, as collected and translated by William Scarborough (1875) reads:
The moth that dashes into the flame
And burns has only itself to blame. (Proverb 864)
Stanza two of Percy Shelley’s “To _______: One Word Is Too Often Profaned” reads:
The desire of the moth for the star,
Of the night for the morrow,
The devotion to something afar
From the sphere of our sorrow.
“Little Birdie” (“an old Southern mountain banjo tune”), as performed by Pete Seeger, who learned it from a member of the Coon Creek Girls when they were visiting New York, in 1940, from Kentucky:
Little birdie, little birdie,
What makes you fly so high?
It’s because I am a true little bird
and I do not fare to die.
Little birdie, little birdie,
What makes your wings so blue?
It’s because I been a-grievin’,
a-grievin’ after you.
Little birdie, little birdie,
What makes your head so red?
After all that I been through,
its a wonder I ain’t dead.
Little birdie, little birdie,
come sing to me your song.
I’ve a short while to be here,
and a long time to be gone.
Little birdie, little birdie,
What makes you fly so high?
It’s because I am a true little bird
and I do not fare to die.
And, in the opening verses of this version, as performed by the Stanley Brothers at the Newport Folk Festival in 1964, it is clear that “Little Birdie” is related to the longtime Grateful Dead–performed traditional song “Dark Hollow”:
Little Birdie, Little Birdie,
Won’t you sing to me a song,
But a long time to stay here,
And a short time to be gone.
Rather be in some dark holler,
Where the sun don’t never shine,
Than you be another man’s darlin’
And to know that you’ll never be mine.
Studio recording: American Beauty (November 1970).
First performance: October 9, 1972, at the Winterland Arena in San Francisco. Disappeared from the repertoire less than a year later, brought back on March 20, 1986, at the Coliseum in Hampton, Virginia. It remained in the repertoire thereafter—often sung in response to the chant “We Want Phil,” from Deadheads—and was the final song ever performed by the Grateful Dead, on July 9, 1995, at Soldier Field in Chicago, given as a second encore, following “Black Muddy River.”
Hunter notes in his anthology of lyrics, named for this song:
Phil Lesh wanted a song to sing to his dying father and had composed a piece complete with every vocal nuance but the words. If ever a lyric “wrote itself,” this did—as fast as the pen would pull.
Lesh, from his autobiography:
Hunter has said elsewhere that I had asked specifically for a song for my father; actually, I merely mentioned casually that I’d be working out the vocals as I drove to visit him. One way or another, that must have been a catalyst for his imagination—a day later, he presented me with some of the most moving and heartfelt lyrics I’ve ever had the good fortune to sing. The result was “Box of Rain,” probably my most well-known and best-loved song, and also the first song on which I sang lead vocal. To this day, I’m asked to sing and dedicate this song to those who are recovering, sick, dying, or who have already passed on. 95
From Classic Albums: American Beauty, a film by Jeremy Marre:
Lesh: The lyrics came about in an unusual way. This was the first time I had written a song in a long time, and I had worked out the melody and the chords, and in fact the whole song, from beginning to end—introduction, coda, and everything—and I put it on a tape and gave it to Hunter.
Hunter: He’d just written these lovely changes and put ’em on a tape for me, and he sang along (scat singing of melody)—so the phrasing was all there, I think I went through it two or three times, writing as fast as I could, and that song was written. I guess it was written for a young man whose father was dying.
Lesh: And at that time, my dad was dying of cancer, and I would drive out to visit with him, in the hospital, and also at the nursing home he spent his final days in, and after Bob gave me the lyrics, on the way out there I would practice singing the song. I sort of identified that song with my dad and his approaching death. The lyrics that he produced were so apt, so perfect. It was very moving, very moving for me to experience that during the period of my dad’s passing. I felt like singing it in other situations similar to that since then.
Carl Hiaasen’s book Stormy Weather (1995) has a wonderful passage in which the lead character, Skink, sings “Box of Rain” to a child in a shelter for people left homeless by a hurricane.