Same song

I was forced into taking siestas when I grew up. It’s always hot at mid-day, and the whole country would “lay low” (even 9-5 folks ended up taking a nap at home, hours to be made up on Saturday morning).

The song that started our 70’s soft-rock radio program was “Your Song”. I have just finished listening to it once again: same context (hot, laying low etc….) pretending I could travel back in time (it would be 48 odd years in between since).

I never noticed Sir Elton’s “and you can tell EverybodAy”…until now. From this, I assure you there were something else I might have missed out while growing up. I was told that even after the Deer Hunter, Robert De Niro still visited Vietnam, walked around and stopped by Apocalypse Now (the bar). Not the tiger cage he was in in the film.

He apparently picked up on something he might have missed even after his pre-production scouting tour. Or he might have identified with his deer hunting role to the point of having mild PTSD. Looping back just to make sure.

In circling back and listening to the same song, same setting, I realized I have moved on and have outgrown the original place and my early self: same geography (French colonial city) yet exists for 21st-century demand.

I do this to ascertain my future self. I want to have a sneak-peak, to be pro-active and to be pre-pared.

When someone starts to get some interests in history etc… as the saying goes, he is getting old. More past than future, more nostalgia than forward-looking.

In Lucy, the movie, Scarlett Johansson would swipe the (mobile) screen so fast (5G?) that NYC time-lapsed back to black&white days with horse carriages and gentlemen in hats.

Same song evokes same feeling: of drift, of loss and of change. I knew deep down then that my song, your song, would change its tune very soon. The sound of far-away gun shots, of exploded bombs, of “napalm girl”and “street execution”, of “burning Monk” and “last chopper”. Those were my Lucy’s swipe.

I only have a mild PTSD, but I know how to process it, to use it.

I am not so sure about others. Are they handling it well? thriving? set-back?

Friends of my generation are still posting photos of all-female school girls ( segregated schools back in my time) in uniform (Ao Dai). Today, I heard they still wear them on Monday mornings for the Pledge of allegiance. While we might be frozen in time, the youngsters are sprouting up and “occupy” our space, our parks and our domain.

I am sure at that age, they comply, but have not quite internalized patriotism, social responsibilities and global ethics. They have seen more talks than action, more flooding than fun. I hope for them the best, in the time of Youtube and Facebook, of live mobile video and live concerts. I just hope they would not be taking for granted their privileged position, being born on this side of the Internet. So available where wi-fi are, but so unwilling to listen to a “quite simple, but .. I hope you don’t mind, I hope you don’t mind, I wrote down this song….” Your song, my song.

While the song lasts, I was hoping to prove the Greek philosopher wrong, that “one cannot swim in the same river twice”. Thinking this over, I wasn’t quite so sure who I was up against, since the river of time has proven him right, many times over.