No Sacred Cows

Les Passantes

I was 18 and living in France when I first heard Antoine Pol’s poem put to music by Brassens.

Along with Graeme Allwright, Dylan, Moustaki, Cohen and a few others, their words spoke to me, stirred something deep inside. Voices from an impenetrable and cloudy unlived future, beautiful yet disturbing in a way that I could not yet pin down. Hesse’s Siddhartha that same year blew this 18-year-old’s mind, touching the heart of a reality I could sense but had not yet lived.

It is so hard to describe the sensation, other than that I knew that they knew. Without yet knowing myself.

In 1973 I understood the words. I didn’t understand why.

Today, more than 50 years later, understanding and knowing merge into a poignant and painful whole.