"This road goes ever on and on"
So they say
One step and I might find myself swept away
In all directions I can see
The road is stretching out to lead this lucky wanderer
Through another day
In other words
When I set out along the road
I never know just what eccentric turns
My road will play
One step and I might find myself
Away from this familiar road I have known
From all directions I can hear
A thousand futures
Calling back across the open road
Into my home
Someday you will wander
"This road goes ever on and on"
One step and I might find myself swept away
In all directions I can see
The road is stretching out to lead this lucky wanderer
Through another day
From other worlds
I can imagine other wanderers
Dancing out across a starry sky on holiday
Someday you will wonder
In All Directions
You could listen to “In All Directions” and get the impression that the song’s author was very much taken with The Lord of the Rings – and you’d be right.
“This road goes ever on and on” comes right out of The Fellowship of the Ring.
But “In All Directions” has another origin. It was in 1988 that I first came across Freeman Dyson’s book “Infinite In All Directions," then brand new, in which Dyson speculates about the state of science and human endeavor in general. There was an intellectual and humanistic expansiveness in Dyson’s book that inspired the musical analog In All Directions.
But the Tolkien sure fit in good.
There is something of Bilbo Baggins eyeing the road opening up before his doorstep that infuses much of humanity's most laudable posture of wonderment.
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