On the 11th of August, I finished a new song titled “This Is not All.” It was a long time in the works. Even though I had probably 90% of the words and music written in 2015, I could never close the book on it. I had four verses and a chorus, but it never felt finished. It needed a bridge. Not long after the first drafting, I came up with the music for a bridge, then couldn’t find the words for it. So, I thought maybe it could be an instrumental break of some sort. But no, still not finished.
Of course, I didn’t work constantly on the song and its bridge over those four years, but every time I thought of the song and how much I liked it, I thought about the need for a bridge. The verses seemed complete, but here’s the question that nagged me: If this — whatever this is — is not all, then what is all? Phrases came to mind: “All you need is love”; “love is all that matters”; “God is love.” The words that flowed from these ideas into the bridge are simple, ending with echoing phrases: “love’s the root and height of all / The root and height of each.” The first lines of the bridge — “The means of control / Are more than out of our hands / They’re far beyond our reach” — connect to the chorus ideas that “Out there is more than we can own / More than we can protect” and “Out there is more than can be known / Always more than we expect.”
This Is not All
Not all the wonder along the trail
Is to be found in woods and sky
Look closer
It’s in the tiny frog hid in the clover
And that creature in the dust with a hundred legs or more
It’s in how I find my way home
And that flower I never noticed by the door
Not all the wonder along the way
Is waiting somewhere far ahead
Look closer
A little boy runs in cape and mask
Another stands shirtless in a barnyard banging a drum
A little girl learns to cartwheel
Another stands by the road and sticks out her thumb
This is not all, no, this is not all
Out there is more than we can own
More than we can protect
This is not all, no, this is not all
Out there is more than can be known
Always more than we expect
This is not all
Not all the evil in the world
Is in the terrorist and thief
Look closer
It’s in the thousand faces of ignorance
Political and corporate and religious
It’s in the hate and hunger
In the trumped-up fights that pit them against us
This is not all, no, this is not all. . . .
The means of control
Are more than out of our hands
They’re far beyond our reach
But we can love
And love’s the root and height of all
The root and height of each
Not all the goodness in the world
Is found within the church and child
Look closer
It’s in the unshackled hearts that lift us
High above the right or wrong or Right or Left
My friend’s warm hand in mine
And true emotion honestly expressed
This is not all, no, this is not all
Out there is more than we can own
More than we can protect
This is not all, no, this is not all
Out there is more than can be known
Always more than we expect
This is not all. . . .
Although the chorus remained the same from the song’s beginning, the verses have undergone some slight revisions, mostly in the phrasing rather than in the content or organization.
So, images for the first verse: I spotted the tiny frog in the yard outside the front door of my son Lane, who lives in Durham, North Carolina; the many-legged creature in the dust was crossing a trail I hiked near Gatlinburg; the flower by the door references an image in Emily Dickinson’s “This was a Poet”:
This was a Poet –
It is That
Distills amazing sense
From Ordinary Meanings –
And Attar so immenseFrom the familiar species
Dickinson’s poem 446 (Franklin numbering)
That perished by the Door –
We wonder it was not Ourselves
Arrested it – before – . . .
I think the overall idea for this verse, which led to the overall direction of the song, came to me on another hike up toward the fire tower above Unicoi. I ran out of time and didn’t make it to the top, but I got far enough for the sense of this song to find me there.
And images for the second verse. The little boy in the cape and mask is my son Raleigh as he was at anytime between learning to walk and, let’s say, ten years old. The boy with the drum I saw alongside I-64 in southern Indiana. But he wasn’t playing a marching snare, as might be imagined by the line I wrote; instead, he was sitting at a full kit set up between a barn and a farmhouse. In the distance, a storm approached across the cornfields behind him. (This remembered image always brings to mind the band Rush, for some reason.) The girls in the verse are born of imagination and contrast and might have something of my granddaughters in them.
Verses three and four are what they are. The evil and the good. The last line in verse three for a long time referenced “the endless fights that pit them against us.” But since I wrote the line in 2015, a lot has happened, and although I cringe at invoking the hobgoblin of the Tweeter in Chief, the false but pervasive construction us-against-them in this so-called democracy has certainly become trumped up. (To “trump something up” is to “invent a false accusation or excuse” or, in this case, the fights that we have over race and nationality and immigration and religion, the fights between the wealthy and the poor and the Left and Right and on and on and on and on. I also think it appropriate in this context to consider “trumped up” synonymous with fucked up.)
That verse four tries to define and celebrate some things that are good suggests, I hope, that to end on a positive note is to have faith that goodness exists and can ultimately prevail. This is not game-show, rah-rah-yay-yay feeling goodness but a goodness that is rich and deeply felt. It’s the love and friendship between us, and it’s transcendent Truth. Yet even as all-encompassing as these things are, they still are not all. As Paul wrote in 1 Corinthians 13:13, “Now faith, hope, and love remain—these three things—and the greatest of these is love.”
This — whatever this you are (or I am) in at the moment — is not all.
P.S. When the opportunity comes along, I’ll record this song — just my guitar and me — and post it. And, by the way, the scripture reference is spoken as “First Corinthians” and not “One Corinthians.” (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)