I'm a child of the 80's (born '73), and this song... Well, it was more than an hymn. There's no other song that so completely embodies the melancholy of my youth, the nostalgia of the future. With the first chords I rush back, a sort of rewinding, to my 15-year-old self, to how it was--how it felt, what I thought.
And, back then, I didn't appreciate it. Being young, I mean. Is it true that youth can only be appreciated in maturity?
Hello, Guile. The song was lovely -- as was your deft recreation of what it meant to be 15 and yearning. I'm reading John Irving's A PRAYER FOR OWEN MEANY and have been infected by Owen's sense of destiny. Irving captures the essence of what it meant to live through the Viet Nam War.I can't quite imagine what Meany would say about "Forever Young," but his diary suggests he knew about death in the same way. Interesting post. Now I have to go back to see which songs I remember most from being 15!
ReplyDeleteThere are many things that remind me of my youth, a song, a smell, a color and so on. Now in my later years, things have not really changed all that much, I'm still just as active and vigorous as I was in my youth, maybe a little wiser and more appreciative. Maybe it is true after all. :)
ReplyDeleteBlessings, Geoff.
Love that tune as well, G! Although, Napoleon Dynamite probably ruined it for me forever. :) I think we all have a song, or in my case 100, that take us places, and evoke feelings of times before. I have songs that remind me of high school and how I longed for life to mean something, anything, more. Songs that remind me of one of my college roommate, and how great it felt to not have anything more. On and on it goes...
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