Rainbow Connection
Rainbow Connection
Song/Poetry analysis by Jo Ellen Kanne
This song is one of personal and familial importance to me. If I ask myself what one poem or set of words has most shaped my life, this is it. Perhaps a bouncy, lighthearted muppets tune is not what most people have in mind as the for-runner for the song which has most shaped their spiritual and emotional life, but this song, reverberated for me from a young age. It was the song my parent’s chose as their wedding song. While I don’t remember much about their wedding that it happened was very significant to me. I moved out to the farm before it, and lost contact with my day-care friends, the church I’d been baptized at and an entire lifestyle of being constantly the center of my care-givers universe. I gained a much bigger family because of it. And yes, I was almost three. And I mostly remember the mud and being kept from playing tag with the boys because I was the flower girl and supposed to be pretty and cute.
The song opens with a question which is phrased in an entirely rhetorical mannner. “Why are there so many songs about rainbows, and what’s on the other side?”. Which, I can, perhaps ironically only come up with a few such songs which deal with the other end of rainbows. And so we begin the philosophical journey. The questions of both how to reach the end of the rainbow and what is on the other side are where we are going in the song. These are spaced in separate lines, implying that the two questions are related but different, and I might choose to argue that this song is not about rainbows at all, but rather more about questions of an afterlife than about sparkly cloud reflections.
The singer then postulates three things about rainbows. First that they are visions, secondly only illusions and third they have nothing to hide. Now, as we come to learn later in the song, the singer wishes to invalidate all three claims. I am choosing to argue in this interpretation that the next verse is the writer’s way of discussing and disproving the first postulate, the second verse is his tool towards debunking the second and the third (La, da…) is all he feels comfortable saying on the third postulate.
I will look at what we know about the singer first. In the most famous rendition of the song, the singer is Kermit the Frog. He is green, which he feels keeps him from fitting in with the other muppets, and he sees himself an intellectual stuck with a bunch of loonies. We know from within the song that the singer surrounds himself, in an ideal world, with lovers and dreamers. He makes distinctions both between the two and places himself in yet a third category. We the listeners do not know what the singer might label this as if it were to contain anyone external to the singer. Even in an ideal world the singer feels set apart, different from those around him.
The first postulate states rainbows are visions. As we know this song can be interpreted as more than just being about literal rainbows, this postulate could be expressed as “An idealized spiritual connection can be realized through hallucinatory experiences.” Within Christianity this fallacy can be stated “Christ was fully God, he was never human nor did he have a human death”. So let us see how the singer addresses and disproves these arguments.
“Who said that every wish would be heard and answered when wished on the morning star?”. The morning star can be used to mean either Venus, the Sun or any planet or star seen before sunrise. Individuals who stress the divinity of experience and the pure divinity of Christ, often cite spiritual answers to mundane problems. The singer encourages us to find the proof in the pudding of these claims, to “Look what it’s done so far”. But from LSD use to Pentecostal Christianity, the long term effects of seeking divinity through personal experience are empty. It is star-gazing, fruitless, without substance or form.
The second postulate states that rainbows are only illusions. This alludes to the fallacy of independence and reliance of purely physical properties. That the divine can be found only in studying the mind and the body. The philosophical notion that consciousness and shared consciousness have a physical place, and that the soul can be lost through brain-injury. The Christian heresy addresses this as that of a christ who was only human, A great prophet and teacher, no more. The singer disproves this theory by alluding to a well studied phenomnea that has known basis in psychology, the common auditory hallucination that one’s name is being called out over and over again. He then references the mermaid’s song that enchants the young sailors and calls them to their death. Believing in nothing supernatural, believing in no afterlife makes suicide an option with no consequences.
While we cannot be sure what “it” the singer has heard too many times to ignore, I assume it is these two sides of the argument about the true nature of rainbows. He wishes to stop the argument, the fighting, the angst about “rainbows”. Which brings us to his third postulate about rainbows. They have nothing to hide. Where in a formal argument, the singer would be required to address why this isn’t true, within the song he can go off and say “la di dah, da tha da.” and it is just as valid. By presenting the singer’s case against each of the first two, he frees himself from telling you anything about the third. For the third is the singer’s way of telling us that this song isn’t about rainbows at all. He has not addressed the treasure at the end of it, or other worldly experiences, or even really talked much about rainbows. The third postulate is simply a convention to clue in us patiently waiting and seeing listeners to what we are supposed be looking at. The tone of the song and the hopeful chorus encourage listeners to keep on trying, to keep on engaging with the singer, to find the hidden meanings, to seek out what the true nature of rainbows. To look for what they are hiding. We may never find this balance, this unity, but someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection, lovers, dreamers and me.
Song/Poetry analysis by Jo Ellen Kanne
This song is one of personal and familial importance to me. If I ask myself what one poem or set of words has most shaped my life, this is it. Perhaps a bouncy, lighthearted muppets tune is not what most people have in mind as the for-runner for the song which has most shaped their spiritual and emotional life, but this song, reverberated for me from a young age. It was the song my parent’s chose as their wedding song. While I don’t remember much about their wedding that it happened was very significant to me. I moved out to the farm before it, and lost contact with my day-care friends, the church I’d been baptized at and an entire lifestyle of being constantly the center of my care-givers universe. I gained a much bigger family because of it. And yes, I was almost three. And I mostly remember the mud and being kept from playing tag with the boys because I was the flower girl and supposed to be pretty and cute.
The song opens with a question which is phrased in an entirely rhetorical mannner. “Why are there so many songs about rainbows, and what’s on the other side?”. Which, I can, perhaps ironically only come up with a few such songs which deal with the other end of rainbows. And so we begin the philosophical journey. The questions of both how to reach the end of the rainbow and what is on the other side are where we are going in the song. These are spaced in separate lines, implying that the two questions are related but different, and I might choose to argue that this song is not about rainbows at all, but rather more about questions of an afterlife than about sparkly cloud reflections.
The singer then postulates three things about rainbows. First that they are visions, secondly only illusions and third they have nothing to hide. Now, as we come to learn later in the song, the singer wishes to invalidate all three claims. I am choosing to argue in this interpretation that the next verse is the writer’s way of discussing and disproving the first postulate, the second verse is his tool towards debunking the second and the third (La, da…) is all he feels comfortable saying on the third postulate.
I will look at what we know about the singer first. In the most famous rendition of the song, the singer is Kermit the Frog. He is green, which he feels keeps him from fitting in with the other muppets, and he sees himself an intellectual stuck with a bunch of loonies. We know from within the song that the singer surrounds himself, in an ideal world, with lovers and dreamers. He makes distinctions both between the two and places himself in yet a third category. We the listeners do not know what the singer might label this as if it were to contain anyone external to the singer. Even in an ideal world the singer feels set apart, different from those around him.
The first postulate states rainbows are visions. As we know this song can be interpreted as more than just being about literal rainbows, this postulate could be expressed as “An idealized spiritual connection can be realized through hallucinatory experiences.” Within Christianity this fallacy can be stated “Christ was fully God, he was never human nor did he have a human death”. So let us see how the singer addresses and disproves these arguments.
“Who said that every wish would be heard and answered when wished on the morning star?”. The morning star can be used to mean either Venus, the Sun or any planet or star seen before sunrise. Individuals who stress the divinity of experience and the pure divinity of Christ, often cite spiritual answers to mundane problems. The singer encourages us to find the proof in the pudding of these claims, to “Look what it’s done so far”. But from LSD use to Pentecostal Christianity, the long term effects of seeking divinity through personal experience are empty. It is star-gazing, fruitless, without substance or form.
The second postulate states that rainbows are only illusions. This alludes to the fallacy of independence and reliance of purely physical properties. That the divine can be found only in studying the mind and the body. The philosophical notion that consciousness and shared consciousness have a physical place, and that the soul can be lost through brain-injury. The Christian heresy addresses this as that of a christ who was only human, A great prophet and teacher, no more. The singer disproves this theory by alluding to a well studied phenomnea that has known basis in psychology, the common auditory hallucination that one’s name is being called out over and over again. He then references the mermaid’s song that enchants the young sailors and calls them to their death. Believing in nothing supernatural, believing in no afterlife makes suicide an option with no consequences.
While we cannot be sure what “it” the singer has heard too many times to ignore, I assume it is these two sides of the argument about the true nature of rainbows. He wishes to stop the argument, the fighting, the angst about “rainbows”. Which brings us to his third postulate about rainbows. They have nothing to hide. Where in a formal argument, the singer would be required to address why this isn’t true, within the song he can go off and say “la di dah, da tha da.” and it is just as valid. By presenting the singer’s case against each of the first two, he frees himself from telling you anything about the third. For the third is the singer’s way of telling us that this song isn’t about rainbows at all. He has not addressed the treasure at the end of it, or other worldly experiences, or even really talked much about rainbows. The third postulate is simply a convention to clue in us patiently waiting and seeing listeners to what we are supposed be looking at. The tone of the song and the hopeful chorus encourage listeners to keep on trying, to keep on engaging with the singer, to find the hidden meanings, to seek out what the true nature of rainbows. To look for what they are hiding. We may never find this balance, this unity, but someday we’ll find it, the rainbow connection, lovers, dreamers and me.