Renaissance – Ashes Are Burning lyrics

"Ashes Are Burning" Meanings

When I was young I had several Renaissance albums and I loved them because the music was beautiful and vocals rich and often haunting. My best friend CH introduced me to them. He died 11 and half years ago. This evening I found myself humming this and it took a moment but I recalled the band and song name so I found a copy of it online and listened. I think it had been at least 20 years since I last heard it. I can't tell you THE meaning of the song but I can tell that when I heard the lyrics all these years later they touched me deeply. I share my thoughts on them only as I see them I'm in know trying to explain what the person or persons who wrote it meant.

Travel the days of freedom
Roads leading everywhere
Come with me now and show how you care

I can tell that when I heard the lyrics they spoke back to the hopes and dreams we shared. I can clearly recall CH's apartment back then and the late nights we spent sharing who we thought we were going to become and what we planned to accomplish. We were young, free and all the roads were available to us, and I am in fact showing up and showing my care for him in my life by writing this.

Follow the dying embers
Cross on the paths that they lay
Breath of the past the earths yesterday

This is me sitting here this evening missing him as if he had only just died, the embers and paths the sad sweet memories this has evoked and the world we lived in back then the past of the earths yesterday.

Clear your mind maybe you will find
That the past is still turning
Circles sway echo yesterday
Ashes burning ashes burning

Colours are fading starlight
Silver the way to find
Walking the shadows, there in our mind

Changing the order slowly
Leaving the mist of time
Fingers are holding fragments of mine

Taken together they remind me that in many real ways all of those long lost days are still there, that somewhere back there we are still planning and hoping, that those shadows are still in me and so they are still real for me. Briefly is was as though he was alive again. The worst part is, he'd been gone long enough that the sorrow had burned down like the ashes described but walking the shadows has brought back such an immediacy to the memories that it's like he just stepped out of the room. But when I look up he's gone again. So for me tonight he has died just that little bit more.

Imagine the burning embers
They glow below and above
Your sins you won't remember
And all you'll find there is love
Ashes are burning brightly
The smoke can be seen from afar
So now you're seeing how far
Ashes are burning the way
Ashes are burning the way

This last line at least helps. We always had a tempestuous relationship, we were either best of friends of at each others throats. While it was a deeply meaningful friendship it was never an easy relationship but over the years the problems have faded like the ember and I'm fortunately with the love without the sins and the smoke from afar and the embers are the love left behind even after all the years he's been gone. I'm 57 years old and I've lost many of the most loved people I've ever known and while I'm not left behind alone there are many many large holes where deeply loved people used to live and play and this song brought one of them back for this one evening. A decidedly mixed blessing.