« Sidebar Notes | Main | Master Bath - Part 3 »
July 13, 2006
The Legionnaire’s Lament (0)
I’m a legionnaire
camel in disrepair
hoping for a frigidaire
to come passing by
I am on reprieve
lacking my joie de vivre
missing my gay Paris
in this desert dry
and I wrote my girl
told her I would not return
I’ve terribly taken a turn
for the worse now I fear
its been a year or more
since they shipped me to this foreign shore
fighting in a foreign war
so far away from my home
if only summer rain would fall
on the houses and the boulevards
and the sidewalk bagatelles, its like a dream
with the roar of cars
and the lulling of the cafe bars
the sweetly sleeping sweeping of the Seine
lord I don't know if I’ll ever be back again
The lyrics above are from a Decemberist’s song that I have been singing to the girls for years. (You run out of songs about sleeping and “Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star” can get a little old after the thousandth time.) The other night she asked me what it meant. I would sing a line or two and she would ask me a question—“What’s disrepair?” “What’s a foreign war?”
It was interesting to come up with answers to her questions that she could understand. Finally she asked if he gets to go home again. I told her we didn’t know if he made it or not. You can guess the next question: “Why?” I explained that songwriters don’t always tell us the endings of their stories. They may want us to think about the situation or want us to imagine what will happen next. “We could change the song so that he goes home at the end.” I said I wasn’t so sure about that.
I was relating the story to Jeremy, a fellow Decemberist’s fan, and he suggested if I ever got the chance to ask Colin Meloy what happens to the Legionnaire, I should ask for Sophia.
For the Wifely Unit, here is a picture of Sophia from the Lakewood 4th of July Parade. The girls’ daycare had a float that was beach party themed. Francesca rode in a wagon behind the float with a little bucket. I won’t say why…
Posted by Rich at July 13, 2006 4:21 PM
