Good to hear from more voices

Every time one of you posts a comment, I am immediately notified in my e-mail (as if you didn't know that by now!). I still get a kick out of reading the comments you post as to the things that are happening in your teenage lives.

Hello to Chew Lin and Karen!

I am glad that the lyrics of the songs resonated with events (mental, emotional, school) in your busy school lives and that you found the lyrics meaningful and even poetic. For me songs have always been life affirming and provided many questions for me to pursue intellectually and like great literature reflect the times we live in as well as pose pertinent questions or issues for us to explore and reflect on.

I am even happier to note that many of you are pursuing your interests and passions (Go for it Karen!) and are realising the talents that all of you have, despite the hectic schedules, consternations, questions and daily interruptions that teenager life is full of.
Yes, Karen, I was and am still very interested in plays.
I was very involved with a local theatre company called Theatreworks in the 1980s (from 1985 to 1991). I acted in their first production called "Be my sushi tonight" and acted in a number of productions each year until my last in 1991. I had to make a choice between taking drama/acting more seriously and perhaps pursuing it full time and my other passion, teaching. Well you all know how that worked out. I still keep in touch with plays because of my friendship with many of my fellow theatre practioners who are still involved in theatre and who also do TV work now like Lim Kay Tong, Lim Yu Beng and tan Kheng Hua (Aiyahh name dropping is so gauche!) I still love acting and drama.

I bought Mary j Blige's debut album many many years ago II think it was before you were born!!) Chew Lin.
(I thought her duet with Bono [who is in my favourite band of all time U2, nest to the Beatles of course] was rather forced and OTT [over the top] I liked her earlier stuff better)

Here are a couple more of my favourite song lyrics and some personal comments.


Eleanor Rigby (Lennon/McCartney)

Ah, look at all the lonely people
Ah, look at all the lonely people
Eleanor Rigby picks up the rice in the church where a wedding has been
Lives in a dream
Waits at the window, wearing the face that she keeps in a jar by the door
Who is it for?

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from ?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong ?

Father McKenzie writing the words of a sermon that no one will hear
No one comes near.
Look at him working.
Darning his socks in the night when there's nobody there
What does he care?

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?
Ah, look at all the lonely people
Ah, look at all the lonely people

Eleanor Rigby died in the church and was buried along with her name
Nobody came
Father McKenzie wiping the dirt from his hands as he walks from the grave
No one was saved

All the lonely people
Where do they all come from?
All the lonely people
Where do they all belong?

This song was written in the 1960s and looked at plight of old people (an often ignored and invisible group of people). It was amazing that pop musicians at that time even recognised them, let alone write a beautiful song that explored the despair and lonleliness that pervaded morst of their lives. It shows how importnat it is to be obeservant as a writer (song or literary) and to be sensitive to the environment around us whihc we often take for granted. As Picasso said "A truly educated person can never find life boring".
( I will be 50 in 3 years time and the song means much more to me now then when I first listened to it in the 1970s. Thats what good wriitng is supposed to do, its meanings and connections change as we grow and change)



Running to Stand Still - U2

And so she woke up
Woke up from where she was lyin' still.
Said I gotta do something
About where we're goin'.
Step on a fast train
Step out of the driving rain, maybe
Run from the darkness in the night.

Singing ah, ah la la la de day
Ah la la la de day.

Sweet the sin, bitter the taste in my mouth.
I see seven towers, but I only see one way out.
You gotta cry without weeping, talk without speaking
Scream without raising your voice.
You know I took the poison, from the poison stream
Then I floated out of here, singing

Ah la la la de dayAh la la la de day.

She walks through the streets
With her eyes painted red
Under black belly of cloud in the rain.
In through a doorway
She brings me white golden pearls
Stolen from the sea.
She is ragin'
She is ragin'
And the storm blows up in her eyes.
She will suffer the needle chill
She's running to stand still.

I used this song to teach poetry and writing to my P6 class in 1989. Its about a drug addict or drug addiction. I loved the irony in the title and the lyrics..... oh boy!Bono for me is a consumate wordsmith, the way he writes his lyrics in a quasi stream of consciousness wash still blows me away.


Nowhere Man (Lennon/McCartney)

He's a real nowhere Man,
Sitting in his Nowhere Land,
Making all his nowhere plansfor nobody.

Doesn't have a point of view,
Knows not where he's going to,
Isn't he a bit like you and me?

Nowhere Man, please listen,
You don't know what you're missing,
Nowhere Man, the world is at your command.

He's as blind as he can be,
Just sees what he wants to see,
Nowhere Man can you see me at all?
Nowhere Man, don't worry,
Take your time, don't hurry,
Leave it all till somebody elselends you a hand.


Doesn't have a point of view,
Knows not where he's going to,
Isn't he a bit like you and me?
Nowhere Man, please listen,
You don't know what you're missing,
Nowhere Man, the world is at your command.

He's a real Nowhere Man,
Sitting in his Nowhere Land,
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody.
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody.
Making all his nowhere plans for nobody.

Sounds like an awfully negative song or is it a timely reminder or cautionary tale about the nowhere man within each of us? (these were my thoughts when i first heard the song as a teenager. I spent alot of my teenage years pondering about the lyrics of songs! And playing football. And studying! And socialising. We actually bought our vinyl record and went to each others houses to listen to the records over and over; sometimes signing along or trying out best to copy the lyrics by listening to the song over and over again [i.e. if the album did not have lyrics enclosed])

Hope you enjoy them.