All of This and Nothing: Cathedral

"All of This and Nothing" is a series of weekly posts, each about one song I really love, by an artist I haven't featured in the previous This Year, Portions For Foxes, or Better Things series. It alternates between Obscure and Famous songs; feel free to argue either way if you're so inclined. See the introduction for more.

Some songs are really important to you at specific moments in your life. This one was a big deal in my head when I was about thirteen - and you probably are wincing, because we've all been thirteen.

It's not pretty.

I still think the song is interesting and thoughtful, but there's definitely an aspect of sounds-profound-to-thirteen-year-olds about it.

This week, my song is Cathedral by Crosby, Stills, and Nash.

(At the time, I didn't know it was explicitly about an acid trip. What can I say? I was thirteen. Profundity flows freely at that age.)

The song is about a guy - lead singer (on this particular song) Graham Nash, to be precise - visiting Winchester Cathedral early one morning and having unexpectedly strong reactions to all of it:

And now I'm standing on the grave of a soldier that died in 1799.
And the day he died, it was a birthday,
And I noticed it was mine.

Listening forty years later, it's all a bit sophomoric, in that late-night bull-session way, but songs are inherently simplified anyway; I don't know if it's any more sophomoric than any other song trying to tackle big ideas. And Nash absolutely sells it: we feel that this is a real moment he had, that this is what he thought and felt and worried about.

Open up the gates of the church and let me out of here.
Too many people have lied in the name of Christ
For anyone to heed the call.
So many people have died in the name of Christ
That I can't believe it all.

This is a song with a story and a point of view, from that era when CSN made brilliant, beautiful music what seemed like effortlessly, with flowing harmonies making it all sound larger than life and important. This is the kind of song that has an outsized impact - that style, that material, and the person I was then. I don't know if it still hits like that, even for people who are thirteen now. I'd like to hope so; I'd like to think that a song can still do that.