Ghost From a Wishing Well

By Mary Carter
Eagle Times Correspondent
When Canadian music legend Gordon Lightfoot released his hit, “If You Could Read My Mind,” my head filled with silent-film-like images of a faceless ghost roaming about a gloomy castle courtyard. Such is the Scooby-Doo-meets-Hamlet thought process of a carefree 13-year-old.

More than five decades later, I hear and envision this reflective ballad in a whole new light. Because of the unfortunate barbs life throws at us all, I’ve come to realize the message this iconic songwriter was so easily conveying.

In 1969, Gordon Lightfoot found himself at the end of his marriage. While seated in an empty house, Lightfoot poured all of his personal pain and sufferings into the lyrics of what would become a number one song. What never sunk into my fanciful teenage brain is that Lightfoot clearly stated, “You know that ghost is me.” Pure eloquence.

My adult mind no longer focuses on that sorrowful ghost. What I see now is my present self seated alongside Lightfoot in that empty, Toronto dwelling. While driven by different chapters, we share that same end to that paperback novel; an end that, as Lightfoot notes in stark honesty, “is just too hard to take.”

In my music-fueled vision, I look out a window and see the 13-year-old me searching for that tortured phantom against a prophetically chromatic sky. In many ways, Lightfoot’s masterpiece is a cautionary letter to the younger me.

While so many songs use clever words and metaphors to lyrically describe a love that is lost, Lightfoot uses simple phrases that tunnel straight to the core. He admits that he doesn’t get it. For any of us who have gone through heartbreak, ‘not getting it’ speaks volumes. Hearing the lyrics to “If You Could Read My Mind” today brings me to tears.

There is a technical explanation for why music makes us smile or cry and form images in our heads in the ways words alone cannot. Dartmouth University researchers discovered the areas in the brain responsible for imagination. A network of neutrons, or one’s mental workspace, ignites the higher brain by playing out creative means by which we might achieve our goals. Music adds a deep effect to this process. In simple terms, it’s called “mind wanderings.”

How appropriate.

Gordon Lightfoot’s song still holds the power to haunt and, yet, to heal me, too. And I know I’m not alone in this theory. We all have songs that can visually pull us back to a moment in time that brought us sorrow or joy or, sometimes, even both.

“If You Could Read My Mind” was featured on a 1970 album initially named “Sit Down Young Stranger.” Lightfoot apparently knew, all those years ago, that I, in my two very different stages of life, would someday come along and listen.

Canadian music artist Gordon Lightfoot (1938-2023) garnered 16 Juno awards and 5 Grammy nominations. During Lightfoot’s official ceremony at the Canadian Songwriters Hall of Fame, it was said that his songs “are works of art every bit as relevant as classic poetry.”