With roots in an old song, this one by Bob Dylan, One More Cup of Coffee, apparently derived from a19th century Gypsy song: a suitor is terrified by the mysterious side of the mountain family and his girlfriend.
I listened to it back in '80 when I drove a used Mercedes panel van, bought in Holland from funds raised from busking in the Paris Metro, to Spain over the Pyrenees Mountains. It shows the balance of love and terror in a young man who leaves an illiterate, extremely beautiful wild young woman who sees the future. His description in one verse of her knife-throwing dad is just for openers, time fails him to describe the others.
In '76, I lived in a Gypsy camp along the River Marne outside of Paris. The tribe's queen liked me, and apparently saw in me qualities I hadn't yet realized I had. One night, when she died, she had some unfinished business she had to set in order, so, much to the consternation of the ambulance medics, she came back to life briefly to take care of it.
The nomadic life is actually a more moral existence than the sedentary one, as is so often the case: society usually imagines the opposite of what is really true. The young man, through whose eyes we get the gist of the song, embodies the societal opinion or bias: he wanted to become the focus of his lover, instead of assuming a more correct secondary priority to the universe. He runs away to the morass; the manipulative enslavement of the spiritually dead lowlands and the inhabitants thereof.
words (by Bob Dylan):
Your breath is sweet
Your eyes are like two jewels in the sky.
Your back is straight, your hair is smooth
On the pillow where you lie.
But I don't sense affection
No gratitude or love
Your loyalty is not to me
But to the stars above.
One more cup of coffee for the road,
One more cup of coffee 'fore I go
To the valley below.
Your daddy he's an outlaw
And a wanderer by trade
He'll teach you how to pick and choose
And how to throw the blade.
He oversees his kingdom
So no stranger does intrude
His voice it trembles as he calls out
For another plate of food.
One more cup of coffee for the road,
One more cup of coffee 'fore I go
To the valley below.
Your sister sees the future
Like your mama and yourself.
You've never learned to read or write
There's no books upon your shelf.
And your pleasure knows no limits
Your voice is like a meadowlark
But your heart is like an ocean
Mysterious and dark.
One more cup of coffee for the road,
One more cup of coffee 'fore I go
To the valley below.
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