Wednesday, June 27, 2007

143/365 Free Bird

If I leave here tomorrow
Would you still remember me?
For I must be traveling on, now,
cause there’s too many places I’ve got to see.
But if I stayed here with you, girl,
Things just couldn’t be the same.
cause I’m as free as a bird now,
And this bird you can not change.

Does this happen anymore in high school? There’s a dance. There’s a last dance. And the last dance is always the same song.

By the end of high school for me, the last-dance song was Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Free Bird.” (Maybe I’ll discuss its predecessor tomorrow.)

I like Lynyrd Skynyrd. “Sweet Home Alabama,” for example, is a great song, even if it is too aggressive and conservative and gets its knickers in a twist over Neil Young.

And although it’s fun to get your stoner voice on and scream “Free Bird!,” I was never a fan of the last dance, having never danced it.

Whaddya do then? Do you sit on the bleachers and look longingly at the dance floor? Do you pack it up and leave while the song goes endlessly on and on? I vote for about 1 minute of (a), then, quickly, (b).

Tim and I are in the midst of a Buffy/Angel marathon. In Buffy the Vampire Slayer season 4, the character Giles gets a few opportunities to sing. The Scooby Gang walks in on him one night to find him singing “Free Bird.” When you hear Tony Head, alone with his guitar, crooning this, you may think, like I did, “Wow. This really is a pretty song.” Even though, once again, the message is “There are things [that have to be] way more important to me than you.”

3 comments:

Otter said...

The last dance... does there have to be a last dance? I like to think of it more as, 'you don't have to go home, but you can't stay here'. In the city, there's always somewhere else to go.

Indigo Bunting said...

Otter: You last dancer, you.

Otter said...

Oh how so very classic. I remember the last dance.
I must admit I did go to a lot of dances in H.S. Which was possibly the only benefit to attending a sexually segrated school, there were lots of dances.