Читать книгу Every Day of My Life - Beeb Birtles - Страница 10

preface

SEVEN SEAS

Tonight the waves are sending their spray across my bow

I ride the ocean’s turbulence with a heavy brow

I keep straining as if my back is breaking

Like men who man the oars

Pressing on until I reach distant shores

Today the mist hangs low like a blanket on my deck

I sail through unknown waters never to go back

At the Captain’s command I follow orders

Like soldiers on a drill

Steady course my journey left to full-

Fill my sails with Your full strength

Let Your wind blow across my breadth and length

Guide my hull through seven seas

Bring me home and bless my life with peace

Tomorrow as the dawn breaks I’ll catch the sun’s first light

With seagulls circling my mast the coast appears in sight

At the turn of the wheel the Helmsman guides me

Safely to the shore

Lower down my anchor to the floor

Fill my sails with Your full strength

Let Your wind blow across my breadth and length

Guide my hull through seven seas

Bring me home and bless my life with peace

I have this fascination with the number seven. It seems to pop up in front of me at the most unlikely times, like when I’m driving and for no reason whatsoever I happen to glance down at the odometer and there will be three sevens in a row. It’s the strangest thing but it happens to me often. Graeham Goble, one of the other founding members of Little River Band, once told me that all of the letters in my name add up to seven, the spiritual number for perfection. I don’t believe in numerology but at the same time I think it’s very interesting.

I was extremely satisfied with the way the words turned out for ‘Seven Seas’. The song hasn’t been recorded as yet. For the longest time it remained untitled until one day when I was looking up the meaning of a certain phrase to do with the ocean, I stumbled onto the fact there are seven main seas in the world. The song has many double meanings.

This is how I see it: the song is about me. I am the ship. Here I am, at the age of sixty-eight, looking back across my life. It’s been a music-filled one for the last fifty years and this song is about my journey through life. The seven seas represent the seven decades of a man’s life. Riding the ocean’s turbulence with a heavy brow are the trials and tribulations we go through in life. Life is not always easy but we press on, we go forward and don’t look back. And as we keep moving forward we sail through unknown waters, not really knowing where we’re heading.

In the chorus, the song turns more spiritual. I’m asking God to fill me with His full strength, in other words, give me all you’ve got to make me the best I can be for my time on earth. The image of the wind blowing across my breadth and length is the sign of the cross, a reminder of what the Christian faith is based on. I think John 3:16 pretty much sums it up for me: ‘For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.’ The rest of the chorus is pretty self-explanatory: guide me through my life, bring me home and bless me with peace.

I invite you to embark on this journey with me. In order to do so we have to set sail north over the Tropic of Capricorn in the Southern Hemisphere, across the equator into the Northern Hemisphere and crossing over the Tropic of Cancer all the way up into the North Sea that divides the United Kingdom and the Netherlands.

Beeb Birtles

2017