An old song for a new apocalyptic age

This morning I found my thoughts turning to an old song by Sting, "Love Is the Seventh Wave," along with Sting's rather profound comments on it. Both his comments and the song's lyrics strike me as resurgently relevant to our current state of global conflict and crisis, and I was rather moved when I looked up the lyrics and reread them after all these years. Sting wrote the song during the culminating years of the Cold War, when a sense of doom hung over everything (as I well remember, because I was 15 when the song came out). In an interview for the NME, he explained the song's central metaphor and shared his intent when writing it: In popular myth, if you count the waves on a sea shore, the seventh wave is supposed to be the strongest, the most profound. And I felt that at present the world is undergoing a wave of evil, if you like. The world's never been as polluted. We've never had as many missiles pointing across the borders, or as many armies in waiting. We seem to be in the grip of this growing sense of doom. And the song is uncharacteristically hopeful, saying that behind this wave there's a much more profound one. It's love, beyond selfishness. And I think if there isn't this wave, then we are finished. So it's singing about something and hoping that by singing about it you'll create it. The alternative, thinking that in five years' time the world will end, isn't that helpful. It might sell records, but it doesn't help the people listening. Here are the lyrics, which, as I said, come off as at least as relevant to our current global cultural moment of crisis and collective sense of impending doom as they were to the original context in which Sting wrote them: In the empire of the sensesYou're the queen of all you surveyAll the cities, all the nationsEverything that falls your way, I say There is a deeper world than thisThat you don't understandThere is a deeper world than thisTugging at your hand Every ripple on the oceanEvery leaf on every treeEvery sand dune in the desertEvery power we never see There is a deeper wave than thisSmiling in the worldThere is a deeper wave than thisListen to me, girl Feel it rising in the citiesFeel it sweeping over landOver borders, over frontiersNothing will its power withstand, I say There is no deeper wave than thisRising in the worldThere is no deeper wave than thisListen to me, girl All the bloodshed, all the angerAll the weapons, all the greedAll the armies, all the missilesAll the symbols of our fear There is a deeper wave than thisRising in the worldThere is a deeper wave than thisListen to me, girl At the still point of destructionAt the center of the furyAll the angels, all the devilsAll around us, can't you see? There is a deeper wave than thisRising in the landThere is a deeper wave…