Roll of the Dice: With Every Wish

A deep cut from an underrated album, “With Every Wish” escaped my understanding when it debuted on the Human Touch album in 1992.

I was 23, very newly wed, and invincible. When I first heard “With Every Wish,” I focused on the  chorus:

Before you choose your wish, son, you better think first:
With every wish there comes a curse.

…and thought, incorrectly, that the song was a warning to choose wisely, that making the wrong choice can have unforeseen consequences.

The first two verses supported my interpretation, each presenting a cautionary tale:

The narrator as a boy, with a Moby Dick-ish obsession over a giant catfish in the lake, skipping church to hunt him, and sinking into the lake when the caught fish pulls him over the side of the boat and into the water.

The narrator as a man, who wooed and won the prettiest girl in town, only to be consumed with jealousy over the attention of other men, growing mean and cruel toward his girl.

Both the girl and the “angel of the lake” taught him the same lesson: think before wishing, because every wish carries a curse.

At 23, I completely missed the word “every,” and I didn’t grok the third verse at all:

These days I sit around and laugh at the many rivers I’ve crossed
But on the far banks there’s always another forest where a man can get lost
Well there in the high trees love’s bluebird glides
Guiding us ‘cross to another river on the other side
And there someone is waitin’ with a look in her eyes
And though my heart’s grown weary and more than a little bit shy
Tonight I’ll drink from her waters to quench my thirst
And leave the angels to worry
With every wish…

A quarter-century down the road, though, I get it.

“With Every Wish” isn’t a cautionary tale about avoiding bad choices–quite the opposite, in fact.

It’s about recognizing that wishes require choices, that *all* choices come with unforeseen consequences, and that recognizing that fact frees you from paralysis and fear and the “what ifs.”

Bruce isn’t encouraging us to not wish–he’s urging us to lean in and accept the good and bad that comes from the wishes and the choices that we make.

This is a cautionary tale about caution.

We have crossed many rivers, but there are many more ahead.
We’ve been burned and broken-hearted, but we can’t help but hope and risk love again.

Bruce closes the song by returning to the lake he fell into as a boy, this time deliberately drinking from it and ignoring the voice of the lake’s angel.

“With every wish…” she whispers.

No need to wait around for the rest of that sentence.

(Note: this is a great example of a literary device Bruce uses frequently–establishing a chorus and cadence, then ending the song prematurely, leaving the listener to supply the rest and ponder the omission. Here, the effect is profound.)

Musically, this is a spare arrangement. Bruce on guitar, Doug Lunn on bass, Kurt Wortman on drums, Roy Bittan on keyboard, are all quiet and restrained, allowing Mark Isham’s gorgeous, muted trumpet to soar above and between the verses, conveying a sense of forward motion through the song and off into the horizon as the final line trails off.

In concert, “With Every Wish” has only been performed a half-dozen times, all on the opening legs of the 1992-1993 tour. Here is the last known performance of the song (and the only U.S. performance) from July 1992. Bruce introduces the song, musing that only now as an adult reading nursery rhymes to his son, he realizes how tragic some of those stories are.

But when he tries to skip over the sad parts, his son makes him go back and read them. Because he knows they’re there for a reason.

With Every Wish
Recorded: Late 1989
Released: Human Touch, 1992
First Performed: June 15, 1992 (Stockholm)
Last Performed: July 23, 1992 (East Rutherford, NJ)

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