1,000 Years in 12 Minutes

I love the Grateful Dead.  This song is an ode to the greatest American band, and more generally, it's an ode to the transcendent experience of losing yourself while listening to a song.  We all have those songs, right?  There are recordings of "Morning Dew" and "Stella Blue" from Winterland in the mid-70s that catapult my consciousness into an other-worldly realm...feels like 1,000 years in 12 minutes.

1,000 Years in 12 Minutes

Instrumentation: acoustic guitar, electric guitar, bouzouki

Was it "Morning Dew" or "Stella Blue"

I cannot recall

But one strange night I swear, 

I think, I thought I saw

The cosmos spiral before my eyes

And into my ears

And condensed into twelve minutes

The feel of a thousand years

A thousand years in twelve minutes

That's all it really takes

To give this nondescript moment

a fair, reasonable shake

And I knew right then and there

I was right where I needed to be

Hearing this song at this time

Holding up a mirror to me

In my eye a galaxy

Spiraling out into the space

Between my mind and infinity

The intersection of matter and grace

So I'm checking out of this

Blue light cheap hotel

For a stroll in the morning dew

Let the muse cast her spell

A spell in the form of a song

I've heard a thousand times before

The first time was when I was a kid

Dreaming on the basement floor

And the last time will never be

Breaking silly rules of our minds

A song can never die

If there's another line to rhyme