A Friday song for B.C.: "Before the Deluge"

by Charlie Smith on November 26th, 2021 at 3:12 PM

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With the catastrophic floods hitting B.C., it's a reminder of one of Jackson Browne's big hits from the mid 1970s.

"Before the Deluge" included some lyrics that seem made for the times we're living in.

We're in deep shit. And the climate breakdown suggests that road washouts and mudslides are going to only get worse in the years to come.

It's okay to feel a sense of grief...and the violin in "Before the Deluge" just might bring it on.

Here's a 2014 remix of "Before the Deluge".

Now, we know that a stable, predictable climate—the basis for agriculture and many other things—could be a thing of the past.

Check out these stanzas of "Before the Deluge" as you hunker down in preparation for the next two atmospheric rivers coming to our province between Saturday (November 27) and Tuesday (December 1):

Let the music keep our spirits high
Let the buildings keep our children dry
Let creation reveal its secrets by and by, by and by
When the light that's lost within us reaches the sky

Some of them were angry
At the way the earth was abused
By the men who learned how to forge her beauty into power

And they struggled to protect her from them
Only to be confused
By the magnitude of her fury in the final hour

And when the sand was gone and the time arrived
In the naked dawn only a few survived
And in attempts to understand a thing so simple and so huge
Believed that they were meant to live after the deluge