Time in My Music

Ugh. A blogthought. “It takes time.” To be honest, I don’t feel as challenged by this as I expected. I seek refuge in a familiar sanctuary: Music.

Being a late bloomer and all – I was about 3 foot 8 till I was 14 – I’m quite familiar with the whole “time taking” of things to happen. A lot of the music I happened to listen to was also time-oriented. Here are selected lyrics of a few I really liked.

You Can’t Hurry Love – Phil Collins
I remember mama said
You can’t hurry love
No, you’ll just have to wait
She said love don’t come easy
Well, it’s a game of give and take
You can’t hurry love
No, you’ll just have to wait
Just trust in a good time
No matter how long it takes

I actually don’t remember mama saying this, come to think of it… she may have said something along the lines of “arranged marriages don’t come easy”… no, I’m just kidding. She didn’t even say that.

Time – Hootie & The Blowfish
Time is wasting
Time is walking
You ain't no friend of mine
I don't know where I’m goin'
I think I'm out of my mind
Thinking about time

Hootie was one of my “MTV years” bands. Very mid-90s. Doing homework in the TV lounge… watching By Demand with Trey and Muriel… does anyone remember the MTV Asia Music Awards when Muriel stole the Funniest Joke in the World from Trey in hopes of joining Code Red? Then Trey shot Muriel and killed him? Erm… Muriel was a puppet.

Time, Love & Tenderness – Michael Bolton
Oh, nothing is a sad as it seems, you know
'Cause someday you'll laugh at the heartache
Someday, you'll laugh at the pain
Somehow you'll get through the heartache
Somehow you can get through the rain

From the I’m-3-foot-8-and-I’ll-never-find-love days.

And, of course, my old favorite from the sad songs post,

Praying for Time – George Michael
And it's hard to love, there's so much to hate
Hanging on to hope
When there is no hope to speak of
And the wounded skies above say it's much, much too late
Well maybe we should all be praying for time

The more I listen to this song, the more I realize it speaks about today’s world more than anything else. The verse above, for example, could be about the spiral of violence in Iraq. Good Job W!!

These are the days of the empty hand
Oh you hold on to what you can
And charity is a coat you wear twice a year

Poor getting poorer. Rich getting richer. It takes a disaster or a catastrophe (Hurricane Katrina, or the earthquake in Northern Pakistan) to remind us that we’re human, fragile and have a responsibility to help our fellow Earth dwellers.

And, in the same vein,

The rich declare themselves poor
And most of us are not sure
If we have too much
But we'll take our chances
'Cause God's stopped keeping score
I guess somewhere along the way
He must have let us all out to play
Turned his back and all God's children
Crept out the back door

I don’t know about the God not keeping score and turning His back on us part, but we’ve certainly managed to creep away somehow. You know, you look around and wonder… is this how it was meant to be? In a perfect world, would we even have things like electricity & telephones? Are inter-continental ballistic missiles really a part of the Grand Plan? Is there one true religion? And if there is, does it exist on Earth? Or have we completely lost the thread?

Maybe we should all be praying for time.

(Funny how my post went from being all light-hearted like to hardcore theo-philosophical... oh well...)