Song Reflection - Peter Ikeda

I really enjoyed listening to the songs in class and then relating them back to what we had read and talked about. I especially liked the second song and how the singer described her life wandering as her "life [was] built on exile far from [her] roots." For me it reminded me of Lane's fourth axiom which describes a "push and pull" affect of the sacredness of land. He notes describes the "lure of sacred space" as the "strongest among homeless, alienated, and estranged." In the song the narrator has been forced from the place of her roots and describes a constant longing for her home. This separation from her home, or place of her roots, causes the singer's soul to forever hold a longing within it; an incompleteness that can only be fulfilled by being reunited with that sacred place. Lane points out that "human existence is heavily dependent on fixed points" because they "enable [us] to 'dwell' in the world with meaning." He concludes in his fourth axiom that a sacred place is necessary for us to be at peace within ourselves because it fulfills that constant longing for purpose in us. This place can be sacred in a religion or sacred for an individual but either way it connects with that individual and completes an aching soul or broken heart allowing us to "live in the world with meaning." I thought this was really cool because it reminds me of my grandparents. I'm half Japanese and my grandparents are 100% Japanese. They were born and raised here in America but during World War 2 they were removed from their homes and relocated to the internment camps when the hostilities towards the Japanese were high. I think this relocation in their lives, the removal from their home into a hostile environment caused them the same pain and longing as the narrator in the song. My grandparents have lived in the same house for about 50 years and they're at that stage in life where a huge house can become more a hindrance than a home. A few years ago my grandparents had to make a very hard decision: to move out of the place they had finally been able to call their own, with memories spanning almost 5 decades, or move to a place foreign to them in order to cater to their age and capabilities. Honestly I think it was one of the hardest decisions of their life. I remember my grandfather especially being touchy to the situation because it was so painful for him to think about having to leave his home. During the period where they were deciding he acted very strange. He was quite, his answers were abrupt and at times abrasive, and he just seemed to be in a constant state of despair. I believe that in this instance Lane's idea of human existence being dependent on sacred places, especially to those who have been estranged or alienated. My grandparents did decide to move and I think it was for the best but it was very heart-wrenching for them because they were leaving the place they had finally been able to call home.