Musing on the Poetic Verses of Indigo Girls’ Songs

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Musing on the Poetic Verses of Indigo Girls’ Songs
by LJ Ortega - March 13, 2009

Indigo Girls

I know that the Indigo Girls have been around for quite some time, but I’ve never really paid much attention to their music. I’m familiar with one of their songs, “The Power of Two,” which is the only one I could relate with whenever I heard their name.

However, I never realized that this American folk rock duo has a wealth of wonderful songs that are not just entertaining to listen but are also intellectually stimulating and very distinctly profound. I made this amazing discovery when I visited a friend’s house last week and heard what I found as a poetic song blasting from her speakers.

I sat there in my friend’s living room, lost in the poetic beauty of the song that I intently listened to. At first, I didn’t bother to find out who the artist was. I just reveled in the beauty of how her powerful voice communicated the song’s message in a way that directly touched the soul.

When my friend finally appeared from the kitchen, I was almost teary-eyed. I asked her for the title of the song she was playing and the artist singing it. Before she answered me, she asked me first how I found the song. I told her I found it very deep. However, I didn’t tell her the other reason why I was so moved by the song’s lyrics, which seemed to have a direct reference to the way I was facing another crossroad in my life at that time.

After hearing my answer, my friend pulled out a whole bunch of CDs from her rack and laid them out on the table in front of me. I saw that they were all CDs of the Indigo Girls. My friend told me that she’s a big fan of the Indigo Girls and that she had a complete collection of all their albums.

When my friend told me that the title of the song I heard was “Watershed,” I immediately looked among my friend’s collection for the CD cover containing the song. I found it as the fourth track in the Indigo Girls’ Retrospective album, which also contained the songs “Power of Two,” “Galileo,” “Strange Fire,” “Closer to Fine,” “Ghost,” “Reunion,” “Least Complicated,” “Get Out the Map”, “Go,” among others.

I asked my friend to replay “Watershed” and I listened to it while reading the lyrics on the CD inlay. And as I listened to the song again and absorbed the lyrics even more, I knew to myself that I was totally captivated by the song already.

From the words of the first verse that started with “Thought I knew my mind like the back of my hand…” I knew that I was going to get emotional again. And true enough, by the time the singer crooned the chorus, I was already feeling that familiar lump in my throat.

The song’s chorus comes with the lyrics “Up on the watershed, standing at the fork in the road. You can stand there and agonize till your agony’s your heaviest load. You’ll never fly as the crow flies; get used to a country mile. When you’re learning to face the path at you pace, every choice is worth your while.”

It’s really a beautiful and very moving song. I resolved to get my own copy of the Indigo Girls’ Retrospective album so I can listen to “Watershed” to my heart’s content as well as the other songs in the album, which I also found very poetic when I listened to them in my friend’s home.

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