Pluto in Libra (1)

If you were born in the 60s or 70s, chances are you had heard this song playing on repeat on the radio.

While I am a child of the 90s, I was very lucky to have a father who loved music above all things (along with books). He earned a scholarship and spent 4 years working as an electrical engineer in Poland in the late 70s. Coming home in post-war Vietnam, his most precious treasures were books about gem stones and alchemy, a cassette player and lots of cassettes with music of all genres

It was a red Sony cassette player that should have looked like this.

I always thought this song was about love. The melody is poetic, nostalgic, sweet and heartfelt. Later on when I was old enough to understand the lyrics, I was speechless. I felt stupid like a cow watching the scene in Matrix Reloaded when Merovingian cursed with the most offensive words in the language of love (here is the link, for science).

This song was not only about love. It’s about love in its multidimensionality and the finite nature of everything including life. It begins with the man praising his lover for her beauty, to the point of comparing her with Helen of Troy, for whom a 10-year war involving 100,000 men and more than 1,000 ships was fought.

If a picture paints a thousand words,

Then why can't I paint you?

The words will never show the you I've come to know.

If a face could launch a thousand ships,

Then where am I to go?

There's no one home but you,

You're all that's left me too.

He seems so desperately in love and unworthy of her love at the same time. He goes on to express his love to her, telling her it would last beyond space and time:

If a man could be two places at one time,

I'd be with you.

Tomorrow and today, beside you all the way.

If the world should stop revolving spinning slowly down to die,

I'd spend the end with you.

Romantic and unrealistic as he may seem, he ends his poem by telling her he is completely aware of the ending time: when the stars will slowly die, so as the light, and they will come back to Source, to the eternal All-That-Is, infinite void of nothingness:

And when the world was through,

Then one by one the stars would all go out,

Then you and I would simply fly away.

I have always associated this song with the Pluto in Libra generation (1971-1983). These precious people were born to baby boomers parents. They have anti-war genes coded in their DNA, and naturally grew up to be peace-lovers, very accommodating people, almost to the point of being people-pleasers without a personality. However, mind you, it is their coping mechanism. Deep down, ultimate peace, sacred laws of nature and divine equilibrium are all that they hold dear to their hearts. The music made during the Pluto in Libra era holds the character of its people: charming, graceful, somewhat nostalgic with a philosophical touch. Even when it’s loud it can never be too loud, even disco music of the 70s was very lovely and courteous!

Any Pluto in Libra here? What was your favorite bands growing up?

Photo credit: Untittled - ChristoSwaggy - DA