A song for no one's in my hand A song they'll never understand Till I have gone And tomorrow brings the sun

From night skies dressed in clouds
Morning came, your taste in my mouth
I like the way that your hair falls down in your eyes
And you blush when you smile
When sleep combs your side then far away flies

I love the way that you stare when the sleep fills your eyes
So yesterday has gone
Who knows, tomorrow may bring all we'll desire
Tomorrow brings the sun

Kiss the world with fingers crossed
I've kissed the world with fingers crossed
I've been praised
I've been cursed
I've been blamed
And I've won
And I've lost

On waves that fill your heart
The future glides
I hope the serpents in the tide
Are all gone
What's done is done

A song for no one's in my hand
A song they'll never understand
Til I have gone
And tomorrow brings the sun

I’ve had this list of songs my whole life (well, it keeps getting added to) that I’ve always fantasised my loved one would serenade me with. Well, if not serenade per se, think of me whenever it plays and dedicate to me by explaining why it reminds him of me. I would feel strange to publish this list to him (cos that would be crass) because it happens that I listen to a song and think he should somehow read my mind and know too that that song was written for me and tell me so… . The list is long and varied… most of them are vague like this one… a song for no one… and then are the ones about women and relationships like Woman by John Lennon and She by Elvis Costello and then there’s Always A Woman by Billy Joel. I remember we were listening to it on shared earphones on our way to work one morning when we still had to travel 45 mins by tram and I explained how I wanted him to sing it to me because couldn’t he see, it was completely about me (it’s ok to be crass once in a while). So he said, not to worry, Billy Joel himself would sing it for me. This is true. I watched Billy Joel live in concert on Friday night. I’d like to tell you about my terribly exciting gig calendar but I am strangely not in a mood to crow about my love for U2 (although, believe me, I do love them)… I’m in a very vague mood… this could be because I’m finally moving on to bigger and better things. The risk with bigger and better things though is you just never know how really bigger and better they can be. And sometimes they’re neither.

Wow, Shakin’ Stevens and Give Me Your Heart Tonight just started playing. That’s another one. And I Love You by Saigon Kick. And The Way You Look Tonight by Frank Sinatra. And then there’s that other completely random Jesus of Suburbia by Green Day. You know, I was thinking about the bands I still have to watch live and I’m only missing Paul McCartney, R.E.M. and I realised that I would very much love to watch Green Day. And my aunt and uncle insist Beck is a must see but I don’t think I’ve heard any of their music in ages. Not that any of these people are coming over but they might. Modest Mouse who I really really liked for a while is playing on Dec 29 but I won’t be in Melbourne. The Killers wouldn’t be bad either.

Alright then… since I started talking about music I might as well talk about the concerts I’m going to watch/have watched in these two weeks… Billy Joel last Friday night, Pearl Jam this Thursday night and the grandest finale of them all, U2, baby this Saturday night. Oh, and I might as well throw in Roger Waters on Feb 1, 2007. Of these, I am more excited by U2 than I thought possible because I hadn’t even listened to my How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb LP that I received as a going away present from work in MARCH until one drunken Thursday night two weeks ago. And on that same night, I listened to the whole album once and then I listened to City of Blinding Lights for three hours perhaps… and believe you me, with an LP this is no easy task… one has to manually go over and position the needle every fucking time! But so seriously, until last Thursday all I wanted to watch U2 for was One and possibly With Or Without You and all the other randoms like Streets Have No Name and Sunday Bloody Sunday and everything but I really only cared about One. This is of course until I heard City of Blinding Lights and I will throw a severe tantrum and go into a dark depression if I do not hear them play this live after all that. I mean, them playing One is a given… it’s going to be a total final encore type song with the lighters in the air and everything. So yeah, we’ll see… either way, it’s going to be an awesome week.

Actually, it’s been pretty good for the last two weeks too. I heard some great news the previous Thursday and in preparation/anticipation/celebration had many drinks on Wednesday and Thursday night (the same U2 marathon Thursday). Then I took an extended break from work from Friday until Tuesday and luxuriated on the couch on Friday and accessory shopped for the house on Saturday and Sunday and did many household things on Monday and then Monday night arrived. Two legendary progressive DJs named Sasha & Digweed graced these shores… in fact, they graced the club right outside my house which was just an added bonus… I went for Sasha last year but apparently Sasha & Digweed together is an unbeatable combination and so went fully prepared for the time of my life and I have to say, I think I had it. I think there are some experiences better left unsaid because it is impossible to try and express with words how one really feels. I have had many such moments where there is always an overwhelming factor like the music or the lights or the people or the emotion and with one big whammy, I’m left speechless and either want to laugh or cry and sometimes do both. That Goa one on New Years Day 2002 and Roger Waters singing Comfortably Numb in Bangalore and some rainy and non-rainy moments heavily intoxicated and dancing under the moonlight with Mr. Moonlight and Mark Knopler playing Brothers in Arms in Melbourne and well, you get the idea…

Billy Joel was great. I never even fully appreciated how freaking brilliant he is on the piano. And when he sang Uptown Girl, I was so very very happy :-) That song, goes back so many fucking years, it's crazy. Of course the second encore finale was Piano Man and I have it entirely recorded on video on my phone… only, my voice singing along is seemingly louder than his… haha…

So, the days are blurring from one to the next as I wake up late and choose whether or not to come into the office… most mornings in the last two weeks, my head has had a light drum and bass band playing a welcome for the first two hours of the day and my throat has cried out in pain until I satisfied its demands for the elixir of life… The nights have been flying by with the aid of all manner of intoxicants and then there has been U2 and Pink Floyd at the crack of dawn.

Funny thing about U2… I've been an unconscious fan my whole life… When I listen to their Best of 1980 to 1990 CD, I can't help but associate memories with the entire CD… cos it would play in my car, over and over and over… as I drove through the hot, humid, dusty, streets… to college, to entertainment, to shop… the scorching sunlight abated somewhat by the air conditioning and the sunglasses…

Sometimes, as I drove home at evening or night, still humid and dusty but allowing a faintly cool breeze to come in by rolling the windows down a crack, belting out… walk on by, walk on through, walk till you run and don’t look back, for here I am… and at a lot of these times, I was hurrying home because I had the munchies and needed a food fix ASAP and all the frying smells in the air on the way home would drive me insane cos have you noticed that Madras (and quite possibly, India) smells of food everywhere you go… sure, there’s pollution and cow dung but heading home on the main streets, passing by the tea kadais and the street vendors, its impossible for that smell of something deep frying in oil to not come wafting across the cars and pedestrians and cows and noise…

And then a lot of the times, as I sat there stuck in traffic, outside the back entrance of my alma mater Good Shepherd and inching forwards towards Sangeetha’s and I’d be singing out loud as I tend to do in the car and people around me would sometimes give me amused glances and sometimes I’d be amused too and smile back but mostly I just tuned out and lost myself completely in whatever was playing… and then before I’d know it, I’d be over the Chetpet bridge and into the relatively sweet release of Poonamallee High Road… once I got to Annanagar, I always had this thing about the home stretch… it was my own special route from just before the infamous Annanagar Roundturner (which is pronounced by all and sundry as “roundtana”) to home a couple of blocks away… it was a major timesaving escape from the traffic at the Roundturner and it was down some peaceful streets with lots of trees and beautiful houses… and then this time I visited, they had concreted the main road so you couldn’t turn into the street anymore… the home stretch has never felt the same since.

So U2 were there and you were there too, and us, and them, and now U2 will be here again this weekend and I’m gearing up to bawl my eyes out because the beauty of it all will just kill me. And no one has put it better than I believe the Grateful Dead when they said…

What a long strange trip it’s been!