The harbor beckons. Distant lights bring hope. Can we believe our eyes? Yes, the flickering grows across the water. A welcome sight, the wharf. Make those hawsers tight. Solid ground rolls under-foot at first, a merry change from choppy seas and pitching decks. The sky is gentler when ashore—more forgiving. Sailors don’t drown on land—only in the lonely sea.

Our journey along the course that Phil Ochs sailed must end. Appropriately, “Crucifixion,”[1] is the final offering on his album “Pleasures of the Harbor.”

This song is long. It should be. It’s comprised of heady stuff, like salty winds that billow sails, steering men away, filling lungs and heads with possibilities and danger. This song aligns two unnatural deaths—that of a man on a cross and that of JFK.

The lilting harbor song welcomed us to shore, back from the siren arms of the sea to that all important human contact, to connections, to the love we need—from our swaddling cries—until the need becomes a craving when we prepare to die.

“Outside of a Small Circle of Friends” uncovers us—the song of our failings, our callous self-interest, our fear and our self-preservation. We know we have the power to act—to save some of those who live in peril from beasts or beastly circumstances.

Now, we hear this haunting allegory, “Crucifixion.” It is the hardest lesson of them all. This tale tells of pushing heroes too far. We don’t ignore their plight. We kill them for it. Then we savor their demise. We hold them up. We swear upon their memories that we will be transformed. It does not last. Another bull is forced into the ring. Another slaughter. And while we weep, we salivate.

And so, we set sail again. The harbor sinks below a friendly enemy—our horizon. We steer our ship to new adventures, opportunities and fortunes. We know the harbor waits. We know that pleasures keep.

But do we know enough to end our fall? Or do we wait, complicit tyrants, yearning for new blood to spill?

About “Crucifixion,” some call this song a dirge. I call it a march.

En Avant! Forward! March to that better day, the day that only comes when we build it—like carpenters of life!

Image: Crucifixion (Marion Junkin)[2]


[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OIwbeEGXj5E Phil Ochs singing “Crucifixion”—and lyrics:
http://www.metrolyrics.com/crucifixion-lyrics-phil-ochs.html
[2] https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/5e66b3e8-8128-d471-e040-e00a180654d7 in public domain