A Change Is Gonna Come
“Songwriter and performer Sam Cooke was one of the most popular and influential african-american singers to emerge in the late ’50s, successfully synthesising a blend of gospel music and secular themes and providing the early foundation for soul music
Cooke’s pure, clear vocals were widely imitated, and his suave, sophisticated image set the style of soul crooners for the next decade. ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’ was released in 1965 after his death. It represented a return to Cooke’s roots, placing him back in the spiritual setting from which he had first emerged just nine years before.”
In November 2007 my friend Listman played me that song and just as deep calls to deep I felt a change was gonna come. And so it did. Listman left Sydney for the pitch black skies of Cobaki and a brief spell of introspection only to return again later. I packed up and returned to Hawkes Bay after 27 years of living in Sydney. I don’t ever see myself going back there to live, though I should never say never!
I spent time yesterday with my old friend Journalist Keith Newman and his wonderfully warm-hearted wife artist Paula Novak. Our time together reminded me of how life can sometimes take our hand and lead us along a path that we never fully intended nor expected to be led down.
To be led like that requires some courage and to consent to being led sometimes requires no small leap of faith. I love that life allows us to practise leap-faithing, not once or twice but often across our lifetimes.
I think there’s great wisdom in her [life’s] method if only to teach us how to do it better each time and to learn a fearlessness we never knew we might be capable of expressing. Have you ever felt there was something in the air and somehow, some time you knew you had to be wherever there was? You should consider it. Try it even, it’s nail-biting stuff!
Such times too, I think, are not the stuff for why-thinkers but for what-purpose thinkers. It’s the place between the rock of preparation and the end work, not a comfortable place but in fact the place where our convictions are forged. Convictions of “to be or not to be.” A change is gonna come, what will you do with that thought today and ultimately will your actions concur?
