Marina asked:

I was wondering if you knew what 'Windmills of your Mind' was about?

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Marina, if you are referring to the song "Windmills of Your Mind", it was written for the 1968 film 'The
Thomas Crown Affair' and was used as a way of expressing the confused mind-whirring events
happening between Steve McQueen's title character and Faye Dunaway's Vicky Anderson, for which
the lyricists Alan and Marilyn Berman got a Golden Globe Award. I'll grant you the lyrics seem rather
puzzling, but I suppose that, in not making much sense, it expressing exactly the emotion called for in
the movie. Out of its original context, it becomes quite baffling, but, oddly and beautifully baffling.
Now, how come baffling is beautiful?

We just love puzzling sets of words, don't we, us humans? What about Don McClean's 'American
Pie'...

And in the streets the children screamed

The lovers cried, and the poets dreamed

But not a word was spoken

The church bells all were broken

And the three men I admire most

The Father, Son and the Holy Ghost

They caught the last train for the coast

The day the music died

And they were singing

Bye-bye, Miss American Pie

Drove my chevy to the levee

But the levee was dry

... which has had academics and music-lovers falling over themselves to explain it as an eulogy for
Marylin Monroe, or for President Kennedy, or an ode to cocaine, or goodness knows what else. The
fact is that, as the philosopher William James put it, "it is natural and even usual to human nature to
court the arduous". And so it is. We like difficult stuff. Not too difficult so as to get frustrating of course,
but who would want to bother with a jigsaw which only had two pieces? Where would by the joy in
mystery of a religion with no obscurity? Or, indeed, in a philosophy with no abstruseness.

Please, Mariana, do not assume for one moment that a lyricist necessarily means to make some
sense in the words of a song. Obscurity, confusion and lack of immediate meaning can be things of
real joy — they make us search into the bizarre corners of our own experiences, and there we so
often find fresh those forgotten things which make us smile, or cry. The best of bards deliberately put
in things which either have no meaning, or which have bewildering multitudes of meanings. Have a
flick though any book of poetry or of songs and you'll see what I mean.

If you are entranced by 'Windmills of your Mind', may I suggest a little philosophical journey? Have
you read The Tao Te Ching of Lao-Tze(I recommend the James Legge translation), or The Rubiyat
of Omar Khayyam? You might try Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spake Zarathustraor flick through
Ludwig Wittgenstein's Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus.Sit back and enjoy them, but don't necessarily
expect them to 'mean' anything. They're not always meant to make sense, they're meant to make you
make your own sense.

Twinning to a tongue of fire,

Leaping live, and laughing higher;

Thro' the everlasting strife

In the mystery of life.

Glyn Hughes

I wonder whether Marina visited my Glass house philosopher notebook page for Sunday, 16th
December 2001 where you will find the complete lyrics to the song, plus a MIDI version of the
excellent arrangement by Sting. (Remember to turn up your speaker volume.)

'Windmills of your Mind' describes how you feel after doing too much philosophy. That day, I'd done
enough philosophy so I just reproduced the lyrics.

...In response to Glyn, I heard that 'the day the music died' refers to the tragic death of Buddy Holly in
an aeroplane crash.

Geoffrey Klempner