transabled.org

 

• About
• Login
• Register
• Contact
• Accessibility

Google Search:
Web transabled.org Go

 

Home / Thoughts / Other's Thoughts / What’s in a Lyric?

What’s in a Lyric?

Written by Claire on Friday, October 27, 2006

When I was involved with the disability chat group that I moderated, I had a friend named Ben. He was a young man of 24 who had Muscular Dystrophy. He was one of the few with whom I had a special rapport, was very sweet, listened when I needed to talk and had a gentle sense of humour.

But towards the end of his life, he talked to me less, and started to send me song lyrics, instead. As time and his disease progressed, it came to the point where he did almost nothing but send me lyrics. This annoyed me, because we weren’t talking. I missed hearing about how his day went, and the patient shoulder he offered when I needed one to cry on. I don’t remember a single song he sent me. I barely read any of the lyrics. That wasn’t communication, or if it was, it was just one-way. What was he doing?

I love that song…

And then he died. And, too late, I started to reflect upon those lyrics. I think now that he knew that the end was near, and he just didn’t have the words to express what he needed to say. Perhaps no longer had the physical strength to type all the complex feelings that may overcome a young man who must say goodbye before he’s barely had the time to live. So he copied and pasted the lyrics to songs, words that said it all better than he could, to me, who didn’t read them, was overcome by my own problems, and was irritated by the flood of seemingly meaningless words. How I regret never paying any attention to those last attempts to communicate. I think now I must have been utterly blinded by my own misery not to see it in someone else whose straits were far more desperate than mine, and yet bore it with so much more dignity.

Sometimes we just can’t find the words, and have to rely on someone else to say them for us. Sometimes they don’t quite fit our situation, but we sing in unison with someone that has lived through something similar. Sometimes we even have to pull them completely out of context, but when we do, they make so much sense. We make of them far more than what the author originally intended. Once they’re set free of the author’s imagination, they take on a life of their own.

Lately nearly every song I hear seems to have some special hidden meaning for a transabled person. It may be a sign that I’m obsessing about being transabled, like some psychology patient who sees a wheelchair in every Rorschach inkblot. Or it may just mean that I have a need to express something, and I just can’t find the right words.

Tags: Transabled, BIID, Lyrics, Songs, Expression