Lets dance in style, lets dance for a while
Heaven can wait, we’re only watching the skies
Hoping for the best but expecting the worst
Are you going to drop the bomb or not?
Let us die young or let us live forever
We don;t have the power but we never say never
Sitting in a sandpit, life is a short trip
The musics for the sad men
Can you imagine when this race is won?
Turn our golden faces into the sun
Praising our leaders were getting in tune
The music’s played by the madmen
Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever, forever and ever?
Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever?
Forever young
Some are like water, some are like the heat
Some are a melody and some are the beat
Sooner or later they all will be gone
Why don’t they stay young?
Its so hard to get old without a cause
I don’t want to perish like a fading horse
Youth is like diamonds in the sun
And diamonds are forever
So many adventures couldn’t happen today
So many songs we forgot to play
So many dreams are swinging out of the blue
Well, let them come true!
Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever?
Forever, whenever
Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever?
Forever, whenever
Forever young, I want to be forever young
Do you really want to live forever?
(Alphaville, 1982)
Anyone that’s ever gone out dancing with me knows how much I love this song. If there’s a DJ who’s playing even remotely 1980s music, I will request this. It was written during the height of the Cold War, something that happened before I was born. I was born in 1985– I vaguely remember the Berlin Wall falling, and the civilian protests of Romania. Now? One of my best friends, Yulia, is a ‘Muscovite’, I speak some Russian, have visited Romania, my brother lives in Hungary. And the whole Cold War paranoia…that was what, a little less than 20 years ago? For people my age, it’s all ancient history. We might vaguely recall seeing a man slam a sledgehammer into the Berlin Wall, but what does it mean for us? I and many other peers of mine love Soviet propaganda posters etc for the graphics, but we don’t know of a time when it actually meant anything.
It’s weird, but I want to be able to time travel back to the late 1970s. For a variety of reasons– one, to tell Joe Strummer that he has a congenital heart condition he needs to keep on top of– but mainly so I could live in a time, albeit briefly, where I felt that my life, and everyone else’s, were immediate, and part of history. I know that many years from now people will look on the late 90s-early 00s as life-changing history, and I know now that it is– holy SHIT, a new Pope, an African American presidential candidate, Fidel Castro stepping down, Saddam Hussien executed? In 5 FREAKING YEARS?– but weirdly, now, while we’re living it…it doesn’t seem as historical or life-changing as stuff from the 70s and 80s were.
Would you really want to live forever?
