I’m still feeling as if yesterday’s news of Donna Summer’s death is some sort of weird, Johnnie-Walker-Red-Label-Scotch-induced dream.
Most of us have an artist who’s songs seem to be the soundtrack of our life. For me, it was Donna Summer. Whenever I play one of her songs, images and memories fill my brain, and I’m reliving the moments.
These two songs are from Donna’s 1987 album All Systems Go, an album that didn’t receive too much attention. Maybe some day I’ll share the full memories these two songs conjure up, but, not now. It was a dark period in my life, a time that wounded me, yet, ultimately changed me for the better.
The first song takes me to the time of the end of a relationship. I was 21, and my first real relationship was ending, and, while it was a necessary ending, there was still that nostalgia for the Good Times. This song made me think of the relationship that ended, and, also, about the desire to move on and find another love.
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As my relationship was ending, this next song seemed to echo so much of what I was going through. It’s not a broken-heart song. It’s a song that’s meaning to me is summed up in the lyric:
It’s a life of a boy who’s scared
Of the waves rushing out
And the wind in the air
It’s a sight of one longing to taste of life.
Even now, as a 46 year old man, when The Black Wave of Depression envelops me, I still feel like that boy who’s scared of the waves and the wind, a boy who wants to be free. There’s a mournfulness in the song, yet the song gives me hope as well, its lyric lifts me up:
It’s the hope
That the time goes by
Take you up on a wing
Teach your soul how to fly
It’s a wish that you live to experience life
And, hey… as a Crazy Man, any song about The Voices makes total sense.
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