Starry, Starry Night

I ordered one of those Timelife Music CD set with all the 70's classic hits... I ripped the ones that I love to my 'puter awhile back, recently I burned them onto CD-R's. Artists like Dan Fogelberg, Bread, Don Mclean, Cat Stevens, Judy Collins, Anne Murray, Rita Coolidge, Dan Hill, Gerry Rafferty, Gilbert O'Sullivan, The Commodores, Chicago and the like... too many to mention, all the good stuff, to me, all the really good stuff...

Take any song/tune that you remember dearly when you were growing up... May it be a commercial jingle, the theme to a television show, a timeless track or a no-namer... But that sound, that certain sound - the chorus, the lyrics, the music, the particular way the song was sang, the melody... The way it made you feel, way back when... Listening to it again, feeling good... remembering the good old days... your youth, the good times and the bad times... all rushing back with a single tune...

Rummage through your memory lane, the crevices of time, maybe you'll remember, maybe not. But when that certain song comes on, you'll know it then, you'll remember hearing it just like yesterday... It's strange, a whole lotta truth can be told from revisiting an old 3-minute song... happysad!

VINCENT
Starry, starry night
Paint your palette blue and gray
Look out on a summer's day
With eyes that know the darkness in my soul
Shadows on the hills
Sketch the trees and the daffodils
Catch the breeze and the winter chills
In colors on the snowy linen land

Starry, starry night
Flaming flowers that brightly blaze
Swirling clouds in violet haze
Reflect in Vincent's eyes of china blue
Colors changing hue
Morning fields of amber grain
Weathered faces lined in pain
Are soothed beneath the artist's loving hand

Now I understand
What you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They would not listen they did not how
Perhaps they'll listen now

For they could not love you
But still your love was true
And when no hope was left inside
On that starry, starry night
You took your life as lovers often do
But I could have told you Vincent
This world was never meant for one
As beautiful as you

Starry, starry night
Portraits hung in empty halls
Frameless heads on nameless walls
With eyes that watch the world and can't forget
Like the strangers that you've met
The ragged men in ragged clothes
The silver thorn of bloody rose
Lie crushed and broken on the virgin snow

Now I think I know
What you tried to say to me
How you suffered for your sanity
How you tried to set them free
They did not listen they're not listening still
Perhaps they never will

Written and performed by Don Mclean

Posted by robert at July 28, 2003 08:47 PM