While the title of The Head and the Heart’s new single is “Shake,” the image of wind captures the true essence of the song. In the beginning and at the end, the wind represents destiny. In the middle stanzas, the prevailing image shifts to wind as a metaphor for time. As the song concludes, the two meanings fuse in the person of the song’s subject.
The opening stanzas describe a sort of helplessness in the face of the winds of destiny. The agents remain passive, like “trees in the wild,” as the wind pushes them. This symbolism emphasizes the invisible and unpredictable nature of the wind. This wind represents “destiny” in a loose sense of the word; there seems to be no guiding purpose or direction to the wind. The man cannot figure out his destiny.
Already in the second stanza, the song begins to transition to the symbol of wind as time. This reckoning of wind as time emphasizes the unending nature of wind as well as its seeming lack of a definitive beginning or end. One cannot say that wind begins or ends, nor that it ever ceases to exist. This wind, however, is not a Heraclitean river (as in “Upon those who step into the same rivers, different and again different waters flow;” and “It is not possible to step twice into the same river”). While “the wind keeps pushing you and me,” you “put all those memories so deep inside my mind;” they “will never be lost.” When he steps in the “river” again, the memories will still be there.
As the song concludes, we finally reach the synthesis of both meanings. The man relinquishes his passivity, becoming the “wind of destiny.” He causes the woman to “shake,” as if hit by an onrushing wind. The word “shake,” however, implies that she does not move from her stationary location. Rather, she becomes like their memories, which remain despite the wind of time. She reaches a sort of middle ground between moving with the wind and remaining stationary. Indeed, throughout the onrush of the wind, she “won’t forget the man / who’s making [her] shake.” By becoming the wind of destiny, the man ensures that the wind of time will not blow away their memories. In this way, the man, who begins as a passive agent in the face of the wind, harnesses that same wind in pursuit of his love.
