Story Behind the Song
Many many years ago, when I was in college, we all suffered the horror of watching the Challenger explode barely a minute into its flight. It wasn't just a simple crash, and it wasn't just the lives lost. It was as if we all lost something that day, and we did. I remember it as vividly as my parents remember the assassination of John Kennedy. It actually hurt.
I skipped most of my classes that day and just played my guitar, hoping to find some solace. I didn't of course, but instead came up with a rather haunting rhythm. Struck by a piece of weird inspiration, I thought I would try to find the right words to fit the occasion - and I found them in a Bloom County cartoon. The cartoon featured the poem "High Flight" by John Gillespie Magee Jr., and it fit so well that incorporated it into my music. Much to my surprise later that day then President Reagan quoted the same poem when addressing the country about the loss that even he felt so keenly. Perhaps the only time I actually admired the man.
I never brought the song to my band, ASK, and never even once considered recording it myself. It just didn't seem right to add a sense of permanence to the thoughts I had going through my head those days. It also seemed exploitive and that was and still is something I wish to avoid.
Now we've lost Columbia, in a sort of odd flip-side of Challenger, a few short minutes from landing. I was recording a guitar part for my new album when my wife Cathy yelled out in shock "The Shuttle crashed!" Even through my headphones I could hear her. We all rushed to the television and watched the footage I'm sure you've all seen by now. I'm older and considerably more jaded than I was in those days long gone, but it still hurt just as bad. We just held each other for a while.
I've always been an avid supporter of the space program. In my opinion we don't do nearly enough. It's not about the experiments, the cost, the dangers, the benefits, or any of that. It's about challenging ourselves as a people and a race. It's about the quest and thirst for knowledge itself. And knowledge lost is a loss to us all.
Of course, I have High Flight in my mind again. I've decided to record it and post it for all to hear. Click on the title above or below to download the mp3 file. Nothing fancy, just a guitar and voice. You decide what it means for yourself. For me, it is both tribute and lament, both honor and loss, both truth and supposition, both hope and sadness.
The poem itself appears below.
Thank you.
Technical notes: Recorded in one take at Crash Pad 5, San Francisco, February 2, 2003.
Lyrics
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth,
And danced the skies on laughter-silvered wings;
Sunward I've climbed, and joined the tumbling mirth
Of sun-split clouds... and done a hundred things
...You have not dreamed of... wheeled and soared and swung
High in the sunlit silence. Hov'ring there,
I've chased the shouting wind along, and flung
My eager craft thought footless halls of air.
Up, up, the long, delirious burning blue
I've topped the windswept heights with easy grace
Where never lark, or even eagle flew
And while with silent, lifting mind I've trod
The high untrespassed sanctity of space...
...put out my hand, and touched the face of God.
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