Tuesday 15 May 2007

Pic of the day: "Madness is not the only danger in games" is incidentally the slogan of Dark Gold Wielder, my latest scrapper in City of Heroes.

Lost songs

"Madness is not the only danger in dreams. There is also the danger that something may be lost which can never be regained." (Lord Mhoram, in Stephen Donaldson's The Illearth War.)

Today I overslept by a couple hours. But on the bright side, in my final dream of the morning I got to hear an exceptionally beautiful song by a woman, about the separation of church and state. Well, among other things, but that's the only thing I remember. It was more, so much more that I fervently wished to remember at least the text, even if the melody was to be lost. I hastily wrote some keywords on a piece of paper... but unfortunately when I did so I was still in the dream, and the paper disappeared along with the dream. -_-

When I woke up, the radio was playing "Alkymisten" by Åge Alexandersen. Quite an interesting and impressive song, although the strong spirit in it is alien to me and contrary. Yet it is a completely different song from the one in my dream, the song I lost on waking. And I know that there is no way back to the land of that dream, to find the song again.

I played Alkymisten (yes it is Norwegian and means The Alchemist) repeatedly later in the day. MSN Music Norway has it. I can certainly empathize with the character in the song, which is probably autobiographical to a great extent. It is a shame that the song - like so many of his - seems to be powered by a spirit of Antichrist. (Which, contrary to popular opinion, is not horned and hoofed evil, but rather "good without God", and likely to become more and more popular in the years to come.)

More surprising may be my choice to wash my soul with "Sugar Baby Love", a worthy candidate for the Blandest Love Song Ever. Unsurprisingly, MSN has a whole list of those. This would explain their 2 million titles, I guess. Why have J-pop when you can have five different versions of "Sugar Baby Love"? The irony here is that I had forgotten the song for years, until I happened to hear it ... as the intro song to the anime Tiny Snow Fairy Sugar, a cute girlish anime about a girl who can see fairies, which are as large as a thumb with silly magic powers and an impressive appetite. The song was of course translated to Japanese, except for the phrase "sugar baby love". And that's why I remembered it again. I am pretty sure that the last time I heard it before that, I had not yet learned English. Even so, I did not seek it out again until now.

So I have recovered a pretty but worthless song, and one meaningful but spiritually polluted. But the song that started it all is lost, and I have no idea what it even was about. Except the separation of church and state, and I can't even say if that was a good or a bad thing.