Day 4 "A Song That Has Made You Sad"

Let's just say that this one made me cry like a little bitch the first time I heard it. 

"I find a field, I tear it up

Til' all the pain's a cloud of dust;

Yeah, sometimes I drive your truck."

Day 3 "A Song That You Wish You Could Sing."

     I remember when I first heard this song on the radio. It became one of the first 5 songs I had in my MP3 player. Jared's voice on this one is just so powerful!!! I always wanted to be able to sing this song at one of my old school's events. Gladly, younger me knew about dignity and shame, and never did so. I would have just embarrassed myself.

   

"Everyone's looking at me.

I'm running around in circles, Baby. 

A quiet desperation's building higher;

I've got to remember this is just a game." 

Day 2 "A Song With Wonderful Lyrics"

     Today's song is one of my favorite and the first one I played when I first purchased my keyboard with the little money I had saved, just three days after leaving my home country. As a matter of fact, when at the music store, this was my "test song." The piano in which this song sounded the best would be the one I would take home with me.

"Now, most of the time we'd have too much to drink

And we'd laugh at the stars and we'd share everything.

Too young to notice, and too dumb to care.

Love was a story that couldn't compare."

      I am sure there are many other songs I have listened to that I can't remember right now, many of which are probably better lyrics-wise than this one, but since it reminds me of my first days in this country, it will always be number one.

Song Challenge: Day 1 "A Song That Reminds You Of Your Childhood."

     Ok, So I was asked to participate in a pretty simple challenge. For ten days, I should post a song and a little description of why I picked it and cite my favorite part or a sentence that holds meaning to me. As for the first day, I will be posting a song that reminds me of my childhood, and this is it:

 

"Aserejé já dejé, dejébe tu de jebere seibiunouva majavi an de bugui an dé güididípi"

      This song is now 13 years old, but it definitely reminds me of my old school events. The dance and lyrics were so catchy that I would be lying if I said my 8-year-old self did not danced along to it at least once. I also remember how people used to modify the lyrics into funnier ones. I think I still remember a few. Back then, It was such a massive hit that not being able to sing it was a sin punishable with social segregation. Ok, no. I am exaggerating, but still, it was a pretty big deal. 

O'Brien's - Good Form

     It's time to be blunt.
     I'm forty-three years old, true, and I'm a writer now, and a long time
ago I walked through Quang Ngai Province as a foot soldier.
     Almost everything else is invented.
     But it's not a game. It's a form. Right here, now, as I invent myself, I'm
thinking of all I want to tell you about why this book is written as it is.
For instance, I want to tell you this: twenty years ago I watched a man
die on a trail near the village of My Khe. I did not kill him. But I was
present, you see, and my presence was guilt enough. I remember his face,
which was not a pretty face, because his jaw was in his throat, and I
remember feeling the burden of responsibility and grief. I blamed myself.
And rightly so, because I was present.
     But listen. Even that story is made up.
     I want you to feel what I felt. I want you to know why story-truth is
truer sometimes than happening-truth.
     Here is the happening-truth. I was once a soldier. There were many
bodies, real bodies with real faces, but I was young then and I was afraid
to look. And now, twenty years later, I'm left with faceless responsibility
and faceless grief.
     Here is the story-truth. He was a slim, dead, almost dainty young man
of about twenty. He lay in the center of a red clay trail near the village of
My Khe. His jaw was in his throat. His one eye was shut, the other eye
was a star-shaped hole. I killed him.
     What stories can do, I guess, is make things present.
     I can look at things I never looked at. I can attach faces to grief and
love and pity and God. I can be brave. I can make myself feel again.
     "Daddy, tell the truth," Kathleen can say, "did you ever kill anybody?"
And I can say, honestly, "Of course not."
     Or I can say, honestly, "Yes."

O'Brien - The Man I Killed

     His jaw was in his throat, his upper lip and teeth were gone, his one

eye was shut, his other eye was a star-shaped hole, his eyebrows were

thin and arched like a woman's, his nose was undamaged, there was a

slight tear at the lobe of one ear, his clean black hair was swept upward

into a cowlick at the rear of the skull, his forehead was lightly freckled,

his fingernails were clean, the skin at his left cheek was peeled back in

three ragged strips, his right cheek was smooth and hairless, there was a

butterfly on his chin, his neck was open to the spinal cord and the blood

there was thick and shiny and it was this wound that had killed him. He

lay face-up in the center of the trail, a slim, dead, almost dainty young

man. He had bony legs, a narrow waist, long shapely fingers. His chest

was sunken and poorly muscled—a scholar, maybe. His wrists were the

wrists of a child. He wore a black shirt, black pajama pants, a gray

ammunition belt, a gold ring on the third finger of his right hand. His

rubber sandals had been blown off. One lay beside him, the other a few

meters up the trail. He had been born, maybe, in 1946 in the village of

My Khe near the central coastline of Quang Ngai Province, where his

parents farmed, and where his family had lived for several centuries, and

where, during the time of the French, his father and two uncles and

many neighbors had joined in the struggle for independence. He was not

a Communist. He was a citizen and a soldier. In the village of My Khe, as

in all of Quang Ngai, patriotic resistance had the force of tradition, which

was partly the force of legend, and from his earliest boyhood the man I 

killed would have listened to stories about the heroic Trung sisters and

Tran Hung Dao's famous rout of the Mongols and Le Loi's final victory

against the Chinese at Tot Dong. He would have been taught that to

defend the land was a man's highest duty and highest privilege. He had

accepted this. It was never open to question. Secretly, though, it also

frightened him. He was not a fighter. His health was poor, his body small

and frail. He liked books. He wanted someday to be a teacher of

mathematics. At night, lying on his mat, he could not picture himself

doing the brave things his father had done, or his uncles, or the heroes of

the stories. He hoped in his heart that he would never be tested. He

hoped the Americans would go away. Soon, he hoped. He kept hoping

and hoping, always, even when he was asleep.

     "Oh, man, you fuckin' trashed the fucker," Azar said. "You scrambled

his sorry self, look at that, you did, you laid him out like Shredded fuckin'

Wheat."