What a beautiful face
I have found in this place
That is circling all round the sun
What a beautiful dream
That could flash on the screen
In a blink of an eye and be gone from me
Soft and sweet
Let me hold it close and keep it here with me
It popped up as we landed in Taipei, which was unsurprising because I've always managed to assign grave meaning to the music I hear at certain painful moments in life. This one was strangely fitting, I thought as I stared drearily out the window at the dreary Taiwanese sky.
And one day we will die
And our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea
But for now we are young
Let us lay in the sun
And count every beautiful thing we can see
Love to be
In the arms of all I'm keeping here with me
Three days on the ground, enough to remember, revisit, and lose. Enough to say hello and goodbye, goodbye. Goodbye.
What a curious life
We have found here tonight
There is music that sounds from the street
There are lights in the clouds
Anna's ghost all around
Hear her voice as it's rolling and ringing through me
Soft and sweet
How the notes all bend and reach above the trees
It is a dry, hard thing, this sort of grief. The leaving hasn't happened yet, and still, it has.
I could feel it then, and I can feel it now. I will never see them again. Not in their little apartment, where portraits, enshrined, hang proudly from the walls, stand on tables, covering every dusty surface not consumed by books and dust and the detritus of nearly a century of life. Not in my old home, here for the summer, pulling magic out of bursting suitcases, stringing together beads, stealing dustpans, cracking walnuts.
Just in photographs, the glossy ones from the infinite number of Kodak rolls developed at Wal-Mart, with the date stamped in pale pink dots across the backs, a neat stack of them in the blue-green-white resealable envelopes, thickly padded. Just in video tapes, from his giant camcorder I'd always needed two hands to lift, grainy but steady, that we used to just leave running on the television while my dad transferred them from their 8mm cassettes to VHS.
Just in memories, which so quickly have faded.
Now, how I remember you
How I would push my fingers through
Your mouth to make those muscles move
That made your voice so smooth and sweet
But now we keep where we don't know
All secrets sleep in winter clothes
With one you loved so long ago
Now he don't even know his name
When I first heard it, I thought it was just another lo-fi love song. It is, sort of. But I've come to hear it as a sort of eulogy.
What a beautiful face
I have found in this place
That is circling all round the sun
And when we meet on a cloud
I'll be laughing out loud
I'll be laughing with everyone I see
Can't believe how strange it is to be anything at all
I stood behind my mother when we said goodbye.
"Don't cry," she said, but not to me.
I stood behind my mother and cried so she couldn't see.
But her mother saw, and, ashamed, we shed the same tears.
