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Monday, March 7, 2011

A Place Where Nothing Ever Happens

The Young at Heart Chorus with David Byrne singing The Talking Heads', "Heaven"



The Young at Heart Chorus is probably one of the most beautiful things that I've ever heard. A group of senior citizens that performs popular music, including selections from Radiohead, Jimi Hendrix, Coldplay, Nirvana, The Talking Heads, etc. I have spent many occasions watching video after video and crying my eyes out.

There is something so amazing about this group that I can't seem to put my finger on. They're fallible. They make mistakes, they're uninhibited about it all. While artists like Thom Yorke and Chris Martin take strides to make everything so very perfect, but Young at Heart is perfect with their oxygen machines and all.

More than Young at Heart, this song is especially poignant for me at this point in my life. Heaven in my life...is also known as Pittsburgh (who would've ever thought anyone would say that?).


Everyone is trying to get to the bar
The name of the bar
The bar is called heaven

The band in heaven
They play my favourite song
Play it one more time
Play it all night long

Oh heaven
Heaven is a place
A place where nothing
Nothing ever happens

Heaven
Heaven is a place
A place where nothing
Nothing ever happens

There is a party
Everyone is there
Everyone will leave at exactly the same time

When this party's over
It will start again
It will not be any different
It will be exactly the same

Oh heaven
Heaven is a place
A place where nothing
Nothing ever happens

When this kiss is over
It will start again
It will not be any different
It will be exactly the same

It's hard to imagine
That nothing at all
Could be so exciting
Could be this much fun

Oh heaven
Heaven is a place
A place where nothing
Nothing ever happens

Heaven
Heaven is a place
A place where nothing
Nothing ever happens


Pittsburgh, Pittsburgh is a place...where nothing ever happens. The same things start over and over again. Every year, the same polls call Pittsburgh one of the world's most liveable cities. Every year, I still can't find a job that pays a living wage that's not contained within a cubicle. Every year, the same people watch the same sports teams win and lose the same games (the Steelers and the Pirates, respectively). It will not be any different. It will be exactly the same.

I have to wonder how anyone can manage to get out of bed and hoof it to their retail, customer service, blue-color industrial job without having these kinds of feelings of depressing deja vu?

 When is enough, enough?

I have these dreams of selling everything I own and buying a yurt. A yurt with space-age polymers, access to an off-the-grid community with a like mind and a like heart. I hear these stories of people giving it all up and living like this, but I have to wonder how they do it?




I'll dream this dream. In a place where nothing...nothing ever happens.







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2 comments:

  1. The only thing that keeps Pittsburgh at the top of that "Most Livable City" list is that the cost of living in most other progressive cities requires a six-figure income. But even to "live" "in" Pittsburgh comfortably, you would still have to earn at least $50K annually. And when minimum wage has been increased once in the last twenty years, and was hardly at a liveable rate way back the last time it was raised, NO city is very liveable to anyone with or without a job. You're right. Nothing ever happens in Pittsburgh, aside from the same old shit. The same terrible traffic, the same misappropriation of funds, the same racist backwoods mentalities, the same, the same, the same.

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  2. Hey, Yurt Sister!
    Some suggested reading: Put your life on a diet : lessons learned from living in 140 square feet / Gregory Paul Johnson.
    Request via the Carnegie Library System.

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