iPiphany

Sometimes while I'm washing the dishes, I just let the thoughts wander about randomly in my head, which is good, because I've made a few important brain-connections that way. But sometimes I'd rather be entertained, and that's when I put on the old iPod before getting up to my elbows in soapy water. Tonight I went the iPod route - I set it to "shuffle" and started the dishes.

The third song that played was "Nikita," by Elton John. Even though it's right here on my Pod, I haven't listened to it in a long time, and I'm not sure I've properly thought about it since I was about 14 years old. It's a beautiful song, a love song to an East German soldier; he sings about his fear that she'll never know how much he loves her*, and about the wall that keeps them apart.

A lot has changed since 1985. I got a little misty, thinking about how much things have changed. And when he got to this part:

And if there ever comes a time
Guns and gates no longer hold you in
And if you're free to make a choice
Just look towards the west and find a friend

I actually started to cry. If I hadn't been washing up, I might have sat right down and bawled. How many people had loved ones on the other side of that wall? How many people never gave up hope that a time would come, when guns and gates no longer held them in? I know that time came 20 years ago, and I was amazed and thrilled and maybe a bit weepy watching it happen on the news back then. But this song, which I haven't listened to properly in about 23 years (that's kind of embarrassing) - this story, this forbidden love, Sir Elton John and his magnificent voice - brought it all home to me in a way that all the news footage and talking heads last week didn't. That wall he was singing about, it's not there anymore. Twenty years ago, families and friends and long-lost lovers were reunited.

There are still so many forces keeping people apart. A lot of terrible, scary things in this world. But that one - the human heart a captive in the snow - is gone, and that can only mean there's hope we'll unload the rest of them.


*Well, Nikita was a woman in the video. Maybe she had to be, in 1985. A lot has changed since then. Rock on, Elton!