This song reminds me of a novel I read once - The Things they've Carried by Tim O'Brien - and I've drawn the two together a bit. I particularly remember the final paragraph when thinking of this song. In the last chapter of the book, the narrator describes his first experience with death, and with keeping the memory of his loved one alive. Particularly, he dreams about the dead girl, and when he dreams it's as though she never died.
" And then it becomes 1990. I'm forty-three years old, and a writer now, still dreaming Linda alive in exactly the same way. She was nine years old. I loved her and then she died. And yet right here, in the spell of memory and imagination, I can still see her as if through ice, as if I'm gazing into some other world, a place where there are no brain tumors and no funeral homes, where there are no bodies at all. I can see Kiowa, too, and Ted Lavender and Curt Lemon, and sometimes I can even see Timmy skating with Linda under the yellow floodlights. I'm young and happy. I'll never die. I'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when I take a high leap into the air and come down thirty years later, I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy's life with a story. "
This song reminds me of a novel I read once - The Things they've Carried by Tim O'Brien - and I've drawn the two together a bit. I particularly remember the final paragraph when thinking of this song. In the last chapter of the book, the narrator describes his first experience with death, and with keeping the memory of his loved one alive. Particularly, he dreams about the dead girl, and when he dreams it's as though she never died.
" And then it becomes 1990. I'm forty-three years old, and a writer now, still dreaming Linda alive in exactly the same way. She was nine years old. I loved her and then she died. And yet right here, in the spell of memory and imagination, I can still see her as if through ice, as if I'm gazing into some other world, a place where there are no brain tumors and no funeral homes, where there are no bodies at all. I can see Kiowa, too, and Ted Lavender and Curt Lemon, and sometimes I can even see Timmy skating with Linda under the yellow floodlights. I'm young and happy. I'll never die. I'm skimming across the surface of my own history, moving fast, riding the melt beneath the blades, doing loops and spins, and when I take a high leap into the air and come down thirty years later, I realize it is as Tim trying to save Timmy's life with a story. "