Yalla Yalla

Well, so long liberty
Let's forget you didn't show
Not in my time
But in our sons' and daughters' time ...

Doncha just love Joe Strummer? Well, I do ... love him to bits, which is all he is now. Since that heart attack in 2002. Just 50. Which once seemed like an age but now, so short. By half. One of my cohort, came the same year as me, but younger by, oh, about 8 months. Born on the equinox, died on the solstice. That's class. Has a train named after him! # 47828 on the Cotswold Railway. Such a true person. Something I read recently, they were sitting round a fire at a Festival somewhere in muddy England, a guy stopped by, sniffed, said the wood smelled like it came from his own village ... and it did, Joe had scored it there ten years earlier and saved it for this occasion. So English. So local. For a guy born in Turkey and raised all around the world. Who wanted to be Woody Guthrie, but reminds me more of Roy Orbison ... not his voice but his approach to song writing, which is operatic as Roy's was. A recitative, an aria, a song ... meaning, I think, that when and if you repeat, a line, a chorus, a verse, it isn't a repetition, it's an advance. Because we don't have that much time. Certain things have to be said. Attention must be paid. And the faith that it will be:

Somebody got a vision of a homeland
From a township, from a township window
Through a township window
Some crazy widow dares to have a vision
Starts seething, like
Seeming like a homeland on the plain
Not in focus yet
Seeming like a homeland on the plain
Not a focus yet ...

And then the other part:

Groovin', lets cut out of the scene, go groovin'
Drive, drive, drive
Distance no object, rasta for I

Yalla, yalla, yalla, ya-lah ...