Rainbows
Rainbows
Paul Williams, who wrote the music for The Muppet Movie, among many other songs, is still alive as we now know because of a new movie about him titled, Paul Williams Still Alive.
When it was released, The Muppet Movie was very popular among us elementary school-age kids; it was not quite as culturally significant as say, Star Wars, but we knew all the words to the songs and it was common to hear someone spontaneously start humming, "Moving Right Along" or "I Hope That Something Better Comes Along."
The signature song was, Rainbow Connection - a song that remains (both lyrically and melodically) one of the Great Tunes in my opinion.
In the first line, Kermit asks, "Why are there so many songs about rainbows?"
I don't know whether there really are that many songs about rainbows (I can only think of a couple) but there does seem to be an innate fascination with them.
It struck me recently that rainbows are one of the very few things that can be seen but never touched. No matter how close we get to a rainbow, it, like the horizon, keeps moving farther away. We will never touch the Sun, or stars, or many other things - but we could, theoretically, even though we would be atomized in the process.
It is that quality of being visible but untouchable that makes them fascinating. They are also unpredictable, which heightens the allure, but it is their property of being unreachable that makes them special.
The ancient Norse called rainbows bifröst the bridge to heaven. And from little I can tell from otehr cultures, rainbows have almost always been seen as positive signs.
Imagine you live in the days before any technology and you experience thunderstorms, earthquakes,volcanoes, floods, droughts, and then one day for no reason you see a completely symmetrical arc of colors. After so many punishments from the gods, you get an image that, if it's a sign it must be a sign of something good.
Non-violent signs such as eclipses and comets were usually seen as signs of impending war. I imagine rainbows were interpreted differently, although in the old days, everything was a sign of impending war.
Rainbows are perfect in a way that few other things are. They are perfectly round, in a way that only the Moon and Sun are - almost every other thing in Nature is assymmetrical. But it is very rare to see more than half of the complete circle. And the rainbow is more perfect than we can even perceive. The bands of colors that we see are from the inadequacies of our eyes to perceive the even gradation of frequencies.
As we head to the Rainbow State, I hope to see many.