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Part I Sail Away Copyright (c) 1985
Time
has come to sail away Come
back another day Who
really knows Where
the winds blow The
seas are calm The
sun is nigh Time
to leave Annapolis High Time
is near Say
goodbye to all here We're
busting loose upon the town Gonna
turn this whole world upside down Cause
we're the class of 85 Time
for us to live our lives Sail
away There's
no school today We're
busting loose upon the town Gonna
turn this whole world upside down Time
has come to sail away Maybe
again someday We'll
return We
will return Sail
back someday
Part II The September 11th Song Copyright (c) 2001 Almost
twenty years later We've
all come ashore Some
have paid the price To
live this American Dream Through
the ultimate sacrifice Be
it Afghanistan Or
the Persian Gulf War Missing
in action Were
our hearts before Who'da
have believed We
would be as mature as we are We
were only prepared To
go forth from this place With
a paper life Several
kids later A
house in Decatur And
second wife We
studied world wars And
our homeland was calm We
never dreamed That
our lives could be harmed By
these madmen Using
airplanes as bombs Falling
down We
were only prepared To
go forth from this place With
a paper life Several
kids later A
house in Decatur And
second wife Now
is the time For
our ships to come in Once
shallow kids Now
we're much deeper friends Once
black and white Now
we're all just American men Time
has come to sail away Maybe
again someday We'll
return We
will return Sail
back someday (c) 1985, 2001, 2003
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original song "Sail Away-Class of '85" was written at the end of
my senior year in high school and broadcast as a video salute on our last
news program before graduation. It reflects the naiveté and
youthful exuberance of a group of high school graduates ready to take on
the world. As a historic town on the Chesapeake and home of the
United States Naval Academy, we lived our lives on the dock of the bay
watching midshipmen earn the right to leave the shore. We too felt we were
on our way.
I had the occasion to speak to one of my classmates and we reminisced about the arrogant innocence we had been able to sustain even into our thirties and how much for granted we took our history and those who at a much younger age so willingly paid the price and sacrificed even their very lives for something that amounted to little more than a word to us- Freedom. As I reflected upon that conversation, I sat down at the piano and began to play the song I had written almost twenty years earlier as a celebration. When I got to the end of the song, I realized that, in light of the changes we had undergone through the experience of September 11th, the other side of the story needed to be told. And so a Part II was added. The song now titled "Class of '85- The September 11th Song" shows that transformation. Both parts of the song end with the same five lines. In the first part, the sailing away and returning is that of someone returning home someday to see old friends. In part two the same line "maybe again someday we'll return" speaks of the uncertainty of a life going off to war. While there have been a number of songs written about this day in history, I'm not sure if any reflect an experience as intimate as this. Most tend to draw more on personal insight or reflection that have a more universal identity such as patriotism or mourning. Here is the continuation of a song within a historical context. I am yet certain as to its meaning to others outside of the group about which it was originally written, however, I submit it, nonetheless, to the posterity of anthologies that will someday become a part of the history that will mold the consciousness of the next generation. |
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On
the morning of September 11th, 2001, my thoughts turned to the friends who
had attended the Academy, comrades who remained in military service, all
of whom were better prepared to understand what would come next. But
then I thought of my classmates who had never served, and whose world
would literally change as a result of seeing and feeling this horrendous
madness face to face- for the first time. You see, we were children
born into peace, the prosperity of the 80's and the ideological victories
of the late 20th century. On September 11th, the bell of our
mortality had finally tolled.
