Turtles All the Way Down

Listen while you read:  It's a little bit country . . .

I've seen Jesus play with flames
In a lake of fire that I was standing in
Met the devil in Seattle
And spent nine months inside the lion's den
Met Buddha another time
And he showed me a glowing light within
But I swear that God is there
Every time I glare in the eyes of my best friend

Says my son, "It's all been done
And someday you're gonna wake up old and gray
So go and try to have some fun
Showing warmth to everyone you meet
And greet and cheat along the way"

There's a gateway in our minds
That leads somewhere out there, far beyond this place
Where reptile aliens made of light
Cut you open and pull out all your pain
Tell me how you make illegal
Something that we all make in our brain
Some say you might go crazy
But then again, it might make you go sane

Every time I take a look
Inside that old and fabled book
I'm blinded and reminded of
The pain caused by some old man in the sky
Marijuana, LSD
Psilocybin, and DMT
They all changed the way I see
But love's the only thing that ever saved my life

So don't waste your mind on nursery rhymes
Or fairy tales of blood and wine
It's turtles all the way down the line
So to each their own 'til we go home
To other realms our souls must roam
To and through the myth that we all call space and time

~  Sturgill Simpson

I first heard of Sturgill Simpson in 2016 with the release of his second effort, A Sailor's Guide to Earth. Once I got over his undeniably country voice, I really liked his songs! But did I know Sturgill Simpson? No!  Since I am currently on Isla Mujeres, where there's a turtle farm called "Tortugranja," I went looking for songs about turtles. And there was Sturgill Simpson! I had no idea what I was in for.

"Turtles All the Way Down" appears on Simpson's album debut, Metamodern Sounds in Country Music, released in 2014. Man, this song has it all! Country music, hippie music, drug references, religion, spirituality, physics, mythology, theology, cosmology, epistemology, philosophy, and probably a whole lot of other "ologies." But Sturgill simplifies it for us:

"It's about giving your heart to love and treating everyone with compassion and respect no matter what you do or don't believe. The cosmic turtle is from a much quoted story found in publications throughout modern physics and philosophy, even ancient theology, that now essentially serves as a comedic picture or expression of a much grander idea." (from an NPR interview)

Well, let me further simplify. There is a somewhat esoteric belief that the world rests upon the back of a turtle. An epistemological koan (riddle) asks, "What does the turtle itself stand on?" The answer is, "Turtles all the way down." So imagine a turtle on the back of a larger turtle on the back of an even larger turtle, and on and on, indefinitely. The story even appears in Stephen Hawkings' 1988 A Brief History of Time, so there's some cred for you.

Is the song about drugs? Yes. Is it about religion? Yes. Is it about love? Yes. But love's the only thing that ever saved my life.

Looking forward to visiting Tortugranja, where the goal is to save the lives of the turtles.