Right outside this lazy summer home
you don’t have time to call
your soul a critic, no
Right outside the lazy gate
of winter’s summer home
wondering where the nuthatch winters1
Wings a mile long
just carried
the bird
away
Chorus:
Wake up to find out
that you are the eyes of the world2
but the heart has its beaches
its homeland and thoughts
of its own
Wake now, discover that
you are the song that
the morning brings
but the heart has its seasons3
its evenings
and songs of its own
There comes a redeemer
and he slowly, too, fades away
There follows a wagon behind him
that’s loaded with clay
and the seeds that were silent
all burst into bloom and decay
The night comes so quiet
and it’s close on the heels of the day
(Chorus)
Sometimes we live no4
particular way but our own
Sometimes we visit your country
and live in your home
Sometimes we ride on your horses
Sometimes we walk alone
Sometimes the songs that we hear
are just songs of our own
(Chorus)
Words by Robert Hunter
Music by Jerry Garcia
A bird:
Nuthatches: Family: Sittidae. Twenty-one species in four genera. Distribution: N. America, Europe, N. Africa, Asia, New Guinea, and Australia. Size: length 4 to 7.5”; weight .35 to 1.75 oz. Plumage: upperparts blue-gray; two species have a bright blue back; some species have a black stripe through each eye; underparts grayish white to brown. Voice: repeated piping phrases, chattering calls.
The word nuthatch is derived from the fondness of the Eurasian species for hazelnuts. [Regarding the phrase: “wondering where the nuthatch winters”:] Only a few species are known to undertake migrations. The Red-breasted nuthatch migrates from the woods of Canada as far as the southern montane woodlands of North America. In some winters, the east Siberian subspecies of the Eurasian nuthatch moves west as far as Finland. [Regarding “wings a mile long”:] They have long wings and a short to medium tail. (From The World Atlas of Birds and The Encyclopedia of Birds)
Invariably mispronounced by Garcia as “nut thatch.”
At least two movies, one book, and more than eleven songs have used this phrase as a title, among them:
A 1914 novel by Harold Bell Wright
A 1917 silent film based on the book (above) by Wright
A 1930 remake of the 1917 film
A song by Richie Blackmore and Roger Glover for Rainbow’s 1979 album, Down to Earth.
A song by Lindsey Buckingham for Fleetwood Mac’s 1982 album, Mirage.
“You are the eyes of the world” is a translation of the noted Buddhist practitioner Longchenpa’s practical guide to the tantra (The Jewel Ship: A Guide to the Meaning of Pure and Total Presence, the Creative Energy of the Universe, or byang chub kyi sems kun byed rgyal po’i don khrid din chen sgru bo). It was translated by Kennard Lipman and Merrill Peterson and published by Lotsawa of Novato, California. The song itself obviously held importance for the folks involved in its production, for part of Hunter’s lyrics are printed opposite the title page.
Compare the quote by Blaise Pascal (1623–62), from his Pensées (1670):
The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know. We feel it in a thousand things. I say that the heart naturally loves the Universal Being, and also itself naturally, according as it gives itself to them; and it hardens itself against one or the other at its will. You have rejected the one and kept the other. Is it by reason that you love yourself?
Compare the song “Goodnight Irene” (a song the band performed once) with its lines
Sometimes I live in the country
Sometimes I live in town
Sometimes I take a great notion
To jump in the river and drown.
Also, the four lines quoted from “Goodnight, Irene” are the same ones that inspired Ken Kesey’s title Sometimes a Great Notion. In counterculture legend, Kesey, a great generator of the sixties, was a subject in the CIA’s MK-ULTRA “acid tests” at the Menlo Park Veterans Hospital, under the direction of Dr. Leo Hollister, one of the company’s prized psychiatrists. The early Warlocks, who were to become the Grateful Dead, were Kesey’s house band for some of the Pranksters’ Acid Tests.
Studio recording: Wake of the Flood (November 15, 1973)
First performance: February 9, 1973, at Roscoe Maples Pavilion, Stanford University, Palo Alto, California. It remained in the repertoire thereafter.