32 songs - Snow patrol - Chasing cars

The audience was too big for the small room. We had to wait, a bigger hall was being prepared apparently. A bit later we walk silently to the other end of the building. On entering the hall, the music is booming over us. The quiet intro I heard in the background, when I was still outside. Now the song has really started. I notice that not everybody thinks this is appropriate. On the other side, that does fit the bill. I’m sure he didn’t pick the music himself though, but I think it is spot-on. There is a certain irony in the lyrics. He is in the front, as if the words are his. “If I lay here, if I just lay here, would you lie with me..” Nobody feels addressed. Nobody likes to be in a coffin. As much as nobody had expected him to be in a coffin. Mid-forties, not even a slightest hint that it could suddenly be over. In the meantime, Snow Patrol keeps filling the hall with noise. I know the song, but I had never actually listened to it properly. Now I have to. It is impossible not to. The lyrics fit the situation on more than one point. “All that I am, all that I ever was”. Around me I see everyone think about how he was for them.



The service is painful. Speeches cannot soften the blow, the loss. I have lost a friend. Not a friend I visited, not someone I spoke on a daily basis, but someone I played football with on the same team for a few years is a friend nonetheless. On a regular basis we talked about our matches together, with this one special match recurring every time. Mutual respect for our football skills, for the love of our club. A friend who shouldn’t have to die, as nobody at this age should just be in bed dead. The last song of the service, the song played to get us to leave the hall, has even more irony in it. “Where the streets have no name”. He was a U2 fan. But why pick this song for a mailman? As if he realizes that he will never deliver any mail again. As if streets exists after you've gone.

But I will certainly never forget the opening song from today. Ever since I have heard the song more often than before. Probably because I am more aware of the song, because I have this image in my mind from the coffin, the hall combined with these lyrics. I can never hear the song quietly, it will always thunder. And I just forget the world.

We'll do it all
Everything
On our own

We don't need
Anything
Or anyone

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

I don't quite know
How to say
How I feel

Those three words
Are said too much
They're not enough

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Forget what we're told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that's bursting into life

Let's waste time
Chasing cars
Around our heads

I need your grace
To remind me
To find my own

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

Forget what we're told
Before we get too old
Show me a garden that's bursting into life

All that I am
All that I ever was
Is here in your perfect eyes, they're all I can see

I don't know where
Confused about how as well
Just know that these things will never change for us at all

If I lay here
If I just lay here
Would you lie with me and just forget the world?

32 songs. Thanx to Nick Hornby. A series about songs that have influenced my life in one way or another.