Well, some days after the tragedy I heard Five For Fighting’s “Superman” (I think that’s the title) and god it made me sad. I guess because the hero theme has been running through my mind a lot recently. It’s a touching song anyway.
*I can’t stand to fly
I’m not that naive
I’m just out to find
The better part of me
I’m more than a bird…I’m more than a plane
More than some pretty face beside a train
It’s not easy to be me
Wish that I could cry
Fall upon my knees
Find a way to lie
About a home I’ll never see
It may sound absurd…but don’t be naive
Even Heroes have the right to bleed
I may be disturbed…but won’t you concede
Even Heroes have the right to dream
It’s not easy to be me
Up, up and away…away from me
It’s all right…You can all sleep sound tonight
I’m not crazy…or anything…
I can’t stand to fly
I’m not that naive
Men weren’t meant to ride
With clouds between their knees
I’m only a man in a silly red sheet
Digging for kryptonite on this one way street
Only a man in a funny red sheet
Looking for special things inside of me
It’s not easy to be me.
*
“Imagine” by John Lennon seems extraordinarily poignant right now, I agree.
So kiss me and smile for me
Tell me that you’ll wait for me
Hold me like you’ll never let me go
Cause I’m leaving on a jet plane
Don’t know when I’ll be back again
Oh babe I hate to go
“Tastykake” by Burning Airlines (I would say that they would probably not get played on the radio because of their name nowadays but they were never played on the radio anyway, so it doesn’t matter).
It isn’t really about anything related to tragedy, but I had this on in the car yesterday and a couple of lines of the lyrics hit me –
Do you still believe you can go anywhere?
Are you free if you’re scared?
*
I was listening to this song last week in my car and literally bawling my eyes out as I drove down Bethany Home Rd.
Lucy came to the timberline
Climbed up on to Rainier and
Looked out over Washington
Swore she could see the apple trees
And she said “ooo ooo oh I never wanna leave
Ooo ooo this place
Ooo ooo yes I always wanna be
Right here”
Peter came to the city and
Climbed up into Liberty and
Looked out over Manhattan
He swore he could see the beauty there
And he said " ooo ooo oh I never wanna leave
Ooo ooo this place
Ooo ooo yes I always wanna be
Right here"
Find a place
To call home
Any place
To call home
Right here
And so I came in the dead of night
Climbed up into the satellite and
Looked out over America
I swear I could see the buffalo
Ooo ooo oh and I never wanna leave
Ooo ooo this place
Ooo ooo yes I always wanna be
Right here, right here
Written by: John Wozniak
Published by: WB Music Corp. & Wozniak Publishing (ASCAP)
I was making a 230 mile drive yesterday, and I had a Christine Lavin CD in. There were two songs that hit me.
The Sixth Floor, about the Kennedy assassination, actually, but it talks begins with “There are lots of children here who do not understand”. I started thinking about what it will be like in 30 years, when we have a group of people my age and younger who only know of this from videos. And what the world will be like then.
The other song, The Wild Blue(I think that’s the correct name) is about Japanese kamikaze pilots in WWII, and how they believed in what they were doing. It’s not glorifying them but taking a look at them and how the idea came about.
Both songs made me choke up when I thought about them in connection with the events of the last two weeks.
I’m nominating another U2 song: “Bullet the Blue Sky,” especially the lines:
“Across the field you see the sky ripped open
See the rain through a gaping wound
Pounding on the women and children
Who run
Into the arms
Of America.”
This is Ironic because the last time I spent time in the World Trade Center was for my company’s Xmas party at Windows on the World. I’d always hoped to eat in the actual restaurant because their catering room and the food they cater is pretty bad, but I hear the actual restaurant is great when you got the food to order.
They released this single early because of the tragedy (actually I believe it was the day after the tragedy). The moment I heard it was “the morning after”, sitting at my kitchen table reading the Washington Post and still not comprehending the horrifying images on the front page. That song came on and I bawled until I had to leave for work
Joni Mitchell: Don’t you know it seems to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone…
Did anyone in NYC or the rest of the world ever really notice the World Trade Center anymore. It was just there until it wasn’t. And how can it not be there? I still can’t absorb that.