Scribe, ut possis cum voles dicere: dices cum velle debebis (Pl. Ep. 6.29)

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Made Me Cry - Enemies

No, i'm not gonna talk about the destruction of Amona, even though the very detailed descriptions of demolishing the houses on the radio made me cry too.

I'm gonna talk about a song - Oh Comely by Neutral Milk Hotel, from their best-known album "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea".

It's eight minutes long. It's very sad. It has only vocals, acoustic guitar and bass and horns in the dramatic coda. Like most of the album this song's lyrics are a mix of several obsessions: sex, death and Anne Frank (the linked article actually mentions the band). I listened to this song many times, and only today suddenly noticed these lyrics:

And I know they buried her body with others,
Her sister and mother and five hundred families,
And will she remember me fifty years later,
I wished I could save her in some sort of time machine,

Know all your enemies,
We know who our enemies are.

Who are my enemies? Antisemites? Nazis? Nihilists? Religious fanatics of all kinds - Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Maoist? Hurt, miseducated and loveless people that wage wars?

Me?

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