My song today is ‘I Can’t Tell You Why’. This song was recorded by the American rock band ‘Eagles’, which appeared on their 1979 album ‘The Long Run’. It was written by band members Timothy B. Schmit, Glenn Frey and Don Henley. Recorded in March 1978, it was the first song finished for the album and the first Eagles song to feature Schmit on lead vocals. Released as a single in February 1980, it became a ‘Billboard Top Ten Hit’ in April of that year, reaching Number 8 on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’ chart, and Number 3 on the ‘Adult Contemporary’ chart. It was the group's last top-ten hits on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’.
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There are so many things in this world which I am able to tell you. I can tell you ‘Why some things are so’ or ‘What it is that makes them so’. However, there are far more things about life and the universe that ‘I Can’t Tell You Why’, because I don’t know, and will never know.
It is one of the world’s greatest enigmas that the more one learns, the more one realises the less one knows. Wisdom can only be derived from genuine life experiences, and because everything in life is ‘relative’, our tree of true knowledge grows most fertile in the families of our beliefs and the seeds of our senses. The closer we can merge with nature and the world in which we live, and the greater our understanding is of the ways of the humans and all creatures who inhabit our world, the less we are ever likely to feel at odds with nature and the earth around us.
I recall once being the workmate of an old mill hand called Albert. Albert was a wise old owl, and as his younger workmates boasted about ‘this’ and ‘that’ or blatantly displayed their knowledge upon any subject, Albert would smile wryly. He mostly remained quiet and listened to the words of his boastful young work colleagues; only adding his ‘two pennyworth’ (pronounced ‘penneth’) when specifically invited to contribute.
If ever we asked Albert for his view on ‘this’ or ‘that’ he would simply say in his Yorkshire tongue, “Nay, lad! ‘Tis no good asking me, ‘cos I know nowt!”; after which he would then proceed to tell you all he did know on the subject. Albert was a natural storyteller who could spin a yarn wider than the bounds of credulity, whilst always leaving us unsure whether he had told us a true tale or simply spun another yarn. Should someone ask him if what he had spoken was true, he’d say, ‘’What dost tha’ think, lad? Do you believe it to be truthful?” Albert would then remind us that, “Truth is what tha’ believes it to be!”
Love and peace Bill xxx