Songs for Saturday: In Memoriam

[mdlbear]

Content Warning: perhaps not for the extremely death-phobic. [skip]

So, today is Día de Muertos as well as Saturday, and I see that none of my memorial songs have been Songs for Saturday. I ought to fix that.

 

The first one, Keep the Dream Alive [ogg] [mp3], was written in 1986 shortly after the Space Shuttle Challenger disaster. There was a memorial concert at Bayfilk III; mine one of the few written for the occasion that are still being performed. I was aiming for hope, not grief; I think I hit it.

I had to add a verse in 2003 for Columbia.

 

After Dad was diagnosed with cancer at the end of 1997, I wrote The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of [ogg] [mp3]. Dad was a long-time science fiction fan; I don't whether that's connected with the fact that he and Isaac Asimov were both in the chemistry department at Columbia, but it's possible. "Stuff" is basically nostalgia for the future that never was. (There are detailed notes at the end.)

Sometime later, Mom suggested (rather strongly) that I write a song to be sung at his memorial service, and didn't think that "Stuff" was suitable. I had to admit that I didn't, either, so that one became Rainbow's Edge [ogg] [mp3]. Dad was one of the pioneers of infrared spectroscopy (in case you were wondering what the "color the eye can't see" was referring to), as well as using digital signal processing to analyze spectra.

 

My daughter Amethyst Rose was stillborn August 4^th, 1990, but it wasn't until 2002 that I was able to write a song For Amy [ogg] [mp3]. She has a cat now, but I still haven't written a song for Curio. Some day.

                          Keep the Dream Alive
Copyright 1986, 2003 Stephen Savitzky.  Some Rights Reserved:  CC by-nc-sa/4.0.

In the year of Nineteen Eighty Six, 
On an icy winter's day
The shuttle Challenger left the pad
And started on her way
The shuttle Challenger lifted off
With seven brave women and men 
In flames they died just ten miles high, 
And never came home again.

    Never came home again,
    In flames they died just ten miles high
    And never came home again.

And seventeen years later
Nearly forty miles high,
Columbia's wreckage wrote a line
Of fire across the sky
But long before the jetstream blew
Her trail of smoke away
We saw that it  marked a highway
We would travel again some day.

So never say that they died in vain
Nor stay on the ground afraid,
The stars are one step closer now
Because of the price we've paid.
And mourn for the shuttles that fly no more,
And weep for the friends we've lost,
But to leave the Earth will still be worth
Whatever it has to cost.

And fire no guns in last salute
But let the rockets roar,
And reach for the wide and starry sky
As Challenger did before.
And raise no earthbound slab of stone, 
To mark the place they lie,
But write their names with a shuttle's flames,
Ten miles in the sky.

And here's a toast to the shuttle crews
Who died for the dream of space
And all the pioneers who have
The sky for a resting place.
No grave nor tombstone do they need,
For their memory will survive
As long as we fly beyond the sky
And keep the dream alive.

    Keep the dream alive,
    As long as we fly beyond the sky
    And keep the dream alive.

    Keep the dream alive,
    Let the shuttles fly beyond the sky
    And keep the dream alive.

---

                    The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of
Copyright 1998 Stephen Savitzky.  Some Rights Reserved:  CC by-nc-sa/4.0.
In memory of Abraham Savitzky, 1919-1999; 
 Shirley Weinland Hentzell, 1931-1999.

Once my friends and I  read science fiction tales
We dreamed of space, and rockets to the moon.
Some day we'd live to walk upon the planets;
The future, oh it couldn't come too soon.

Now it's long past the time we called the future
And still we carry on from day to day
The wonders of tomorrow still elude us;
Reality keeps getting in the way.

    And the starlit crystal spires along the Grand Canal,
    The cloudlight on the warm Venusian sea,
    Have vanished, like the stuff that dreams are made of;
    The future isn't like it used to be.

We watched as gallant men  rode thunder to the sky
Our probes brought distant planets into view:
The dry and cratered plains of Mars and Venus--
Some dreams were dead before they could come true.

The Saturn Five once carried spacemen moonward
We've lost the plans to build her kind again
Bureaucracy and budgets dragged her under
Her launching pad stands rusting in the rain.

    refrain

The century's last year  was safely far away
We'd have machines that talked with us, and more.
We never knew the challenge we'd be facing
Was code we keypunched forty years before.

Atomic powered rockets were a pipe-dream;
Most cities still burn coal to chase the dark.
The monorail that once ran to the spaceport
Takes children to an outing in the park.

    refrain

But the future that we lost is still someplace out there 
Orion still rides hellfire toward the blue,
And rockets proudly land upon their tailfins,
As God and Robert Heinlein meant them to.

Yes, someplace there are old fans who remember
The way the future was when we were young,
And when the chains of space and time slip from me
I'll be part of the song that once was sung.

    And I'll share a song with Rhysling,
    beside the Grand Canal,
    Ride lightsails on the endless starry sea
    When I've become the stuff that dreams are made of
    In the future of my childrens' memory.

---

                             Rainbow's Edge
Copyright 1998 Stephen Savitzky.  Some Rights Reserved:  CC by-nc-sa/4.0.


I'm lying in bed in the dawn's grey light
And I'm trying to write a song;
It's one of those times when the feeling's right
But everything else is wrong.
I wish I could have a rainbow,
To light up the morning sky
Wish I could find the words to use
When it's too hard to say goodbye.

    A little over the rainbow's edge
    Is a color the eye can't see
    But I can't seem to remember
    When my father told that to me.
    My memory's like the rainbow,
    There are pieces that come and go,
    And somewhere over the rainbow's edge
    Is something I used to know.

I'm stuck in the rush-hour traffic jam
Going home in a winter rain,
Remembering some of our summer trips
To Tennessee and to Maine.
Eating picnic lunch by the roadside;
Hitting every tourist sight
Playing solitaire and casino
In our motel room at night.

I step off a train in Electric Town
And wonder which way to go;
Akihabara's like Canal Street 
When we called it Radio Row.
Dad taught me about computers back
In the old days, when men were men
And transistors were germanium;
Writing code with a ballpoint pen.

    A little over the rainbow's edge
    Is a color that has no name
    The clouds in the sky keep changing
    And nothing remains the same.
    The rainbow is only sunlight
    Spread out in the cloudy air
    A little like a memory
    When nothing is really there.

I'm driving down out of Hecker Pass
On a winding road to the sea,
My kids in the back seat reading
Just like my brother and me.
We'd go to New York on weekends,
For museums, or just to roam;
There were sodium vapor streetlamps
At night on the highway home.

I'm standing here doing the morning chores
And trying hard not to cry
Remembering all of the things we did
In all of the days gone by.
And there isn't a rainbow this time,
But maybe before tonight
I'll remember enough of the words I need
For the song that I want to write. 

    A little over the rainbow's edge
    Is a color the eye can't see,
    But I will always remember
    What my father has been to me.
    But sunlight becomes the rainbow
    Only after a storm has gone;
    Somewhere over the rainbow's edge
    I'm trying to carry on.

---

                                 For Amy
Copyright 2002 Stephen Savitzky.  Some Rights Reserved:  CC by-nc-sa/4.0.

I sometimes have spoken about you
But I never did write you a song;
It's not that I ever forgot you,
Though between us the years have grown long,
But now after all that I've been through,
the heartache, the laughter, the tears,
I'm singing a song for my Amethyst Rose
Who's waited for so many years.

    The flowers of summer are shattered
    Their stems wrapped in shadow and frost, 
    Their leaves and their petals wind-scattered,
    Reminders of all we have lost;
    But one stands with blossom unbroken,
    No matter what bitter wind blows,
    Of love and remembrance a token,
    Forever, for Amethyst Rose.

Though you never were more than a shadow
Stillborn before you could live
Still I've always been drawn to your darkness--
Even shadows have something to give.
And whenever my dreams have been shattered,
And sift through my fingers like sand
It's then I remember my Amethyst Rose
And dream you are holding my hand.

    The flowers of summer are shattered
    Their stems wrapped in shadow and frost, 
    Their leaves and their petals wind-scattered,
    Reminders of all we have lost;
    But one stands with blossom unbroken,
    No matter what bitter wind blows,
    Of love and remembrance a token,
    Forever, for Amethyst Rose.

I dream of a petrified forest
And gaze at a stone, silent glade
Where one crystal flower stands blooming,
Her stems and her leaves of green jade;
Obsidian thorns keen as sorrow,
But when I've been forgotten for years,
Still there in the twilight my  Amethyst Rose
Will be blooming, untarnished by tears.

    The flowers of summer are shattered
    Their stems wrapped in shadow and frost, 
    Their leaves and their petals wind-scattered,
    Reminders of all we have lost;
    But one stands with blossom unbroken,
    No matter what bitter wind blows,
    Of love and remembrance a token,
    Forever, for Amethyst Rose.

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Comments

Ad Astra

[acelightning]

Yes, this isn't the future I expected to live in. Apollo 1 made me fear that humanity would give up trying to fly into space. I wanted so badly to stroll in 1/6 G along the corridors of Luna City (after the rocket had landed on its tail fins!), or take a sightseeing flight among Jupiter's moons. Or maybe even be part of the first interstellar adventure. But I didn't have "the right stuff" to become a spacewoman... although a bizarre chain of events led to a little of my DNA (inside the Lunar Module "Snoopy") going into a long orbit.

And I know what the color over the edge of the rainbow looks like. I'm a natural tetrachromat - I can see slightly into the UV range, which is probably why purple became my favorite color. (Only women can be tetrachromats, because the gene for the variant visual pigment is carried on the X chromosome, and I've never read any explanations as to why.)

I'm probably not going to get to have my 100th birthday party in Luna City, although there may be an orbital habitat available by 2047. But I need a few medical breakthroughs before then, so that my damaged heart can sustain the strain of liftoff.

And I still miss my Dad, too. He taught me how to use tools safely, how to fix stuff, how to solve problems with logic and pragmatism; he taught me what I call "creative mis-use of hardware" (the French term is "bricolage"). He worked at Grumman while they were building the Lunar Modules, which is how I came to be working there at the same time.

One of my friends on a Pagan email list asked whether I was inviting my ancestors to the Samhain feast. It dawned on me that all I have now is too damned many ancestors, but of course all of them were invited to the feast - my dad and my mom, my former High Priestess and her partner (who was a big name in NYC fandom) Robert Heinlein and Isaac Asimov, and Grissom, Chaffee, and White, and all the others who died while reaching upward...

But we can't give up, can we? This isn't the future we wanted, but we have to keep working on making a present that will create that future.

Re: Ad Astra

[mdlbear]

Well said. Thanks!

Re: Ad Astra

[acelightning]

You're entirely welcome. You and I had very similar childhoods, sneaking our copies of Analog and Galaxy inside our Social Studies textbooks, and wondering if we could have a vacation on the Moon for our "Sweet Sixteen" present.

I think I've mentioned before that, when I was a country-and-western DJ on Long Island, my closing theme song was Southwind's recording of "The Cool Green Hills Of Earth" - the first science-fiction country-and-western song. So I've hoisted a few with Rhysling in the spaceport bars of my mind.
(faking an alto part)"The arching sky is calling,
Spacers to their trade;
'All hands! Stand by! Free-falling'
And the lights below us fade;
Out ride the folk of Terra,
Far drives the thundering jet,
Up leaps the race of humans,
Out, far, and onward yet —"

Re: Ad Astra

[mdlbear]

Cool! I had no idea that Southwind version existed. That's... interesting.

Re: Ad Astra

[acelightning]

Here's the Southwind version, from the album "Ready to Ride" (the single isn't on YouTube anywhere). As a failed Heinlein Woman (I'm a lousy shot, I suck at math, I can only communicate effectively in about four languages, and my hair isn't naturally red), I find it sad that I have to modify Heinlein's lyrics to meet today's expectations of inclusiveness.

[']

[redsixwing]

Beautiful, all of these.

I'm doing a lot of thinking today even without a Day of the Dead ceremony you could so much as hang a candleflame on, and some of it's on similar lines as yours.

I've heard Keep the Dream Alive somewhere. You hit hope, all right. I didn't know it was yours; excellent work. It's one of my favorites.

Re: [']

[mdlbear]

Thanks! We probably have a convention or two in common; I don't think anyone else is singing it. That, or you own the memorial concert tape.