Posted by:
Nightingale
(
)
Date: January 27, 2024 05:24PM
elderolddog Wrote:
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> I'm not going to name names
> or point a finger, but what
> if ghawd was one of us?
You're a genius, EOD. Your deep philosophical query reminded me of a song I used to like. I haven't heard it for a long time. It was the soundtrack for a TV show I used to watch: Joan of Arcadia. The name of the show's theme song is "What if God was one of us?" As you ask! Spooky eh?
I like the tune but also the words in the chorus:
What if God was one of us
Just a slob like one of us
Just a stranger on a bus
Tryin' to make his way home
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From Songfacts:
https://www.songfacts.com/facts/joan-osborne/one-of-us"This was written by Eric Bazilian, who was working on the album with Rob Hyman and Rick Chertoff. He told Songfacts: "For me, the song was more about what happens to you when you look at something that has completely changed your world view, which could be meeting God, it could be meeting an alien, it could be a near-death experience, it could be anything like that. Just how everything you know is wrong, or everything you know is right, and you didn't know it."
"Eric Bazilian wasn't trying to advocate any specific religious belief when he wrote this song. "In my case, it's not a religious thing - I'm not a religious person," he told Songfacts. "My relationship with the absolute is very private and personal. I'm not trying to bring anybody around to any way of thinking. You don't write songs like that, they write you. When I write songs, I don't have any agenda. I often learn a lot about what I'm thinking about any given issue from the songs I write about it. There was no conscious decision to write a song with the 'G' word in it, but it ended up sort of summing up my world view inadvertently, just by the words that happened to pour out of me at the time."
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Made me laugh: Could be God, could be an alien. Hahahahahaha. Would we know which is which I wonder.
For me the song is not so much a religious theme - it's that the chorus expresses the way I like to see people. As in, don't walk past that hungry person and scorn them - you never know the circumstances behind someone's challenges. It's quick and easy to blame people. Harder to remind ourselves often that much of our bounty is luck of the draw, such as where we were born and to whom and how the chips fall, and not purely an outcome of our own efforts or merit.
Here's the song, dedicated to EOD this day. (Give it a chance - you have to get past the opening part of the video (kinda strange) and 1 or 2 verses to get to the chorus):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aDdOnl0bHO4So now I'm going to be singing this chorus all day. It's kinda catchy, for several reasons.
Enjoy!