Let It Speak To You

After the bombings on Sept. 11th, there were a number of songs banned from radio play. (You can read the full story here).

The idea was to avoid playing songs that might strike a nerve for a nation in shock and grief. It's a nice idea until you realise that, apart from putting a lid on "Great Balls of Fire", they also suggested DJs avoid playing "Imagine" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water". One of the banned songs was Billy Joel's "Only the Good Die Young". It's a fantastic pop song, but the title gives it a bad rap. I've heard the sentiment of the title darkly invoked by morbid teenagers and the riders of motorcycles. But the song is not at all about death, it's about life. It's an update of Herrick's "To The Virgins, To Make Much of Time", which was similarily rather naughty advice to the nubile to drink deep of the draught of life before time passes by.

But although the song's title has an ironic, or at least tongue-in-cheek, twist to it, I have to agree with the sentiment. I think that when someone dies before the age of, say, 18, it's rare that they've become a complex enough person to be considered anything but good; they are too young to be much more than potential cut short. This can be the most tragic part of losing them.

Billy's statement of preference for laughing with the sinners over crying with the saints are the words of someone who has embraced life and the dark and the light that life is made up of. Only the good die young, but those who have gone beyond just being good and looked for something more than that are those who have really lived life and cannot, therefore, die young.

It's a tragedy for us that Trajan is no longer here, and that his contributions to the world have been cut short. But amidst this grief, be solaced that he lived his life in such a way that we cannot say that he died young.

You might have heard I run with a dangerous crowd
We ain’t too pretty we ain’t too proud
We might be laughing a bit too loud
Aw but that never hurt no one...