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| Uncle Morry with (I believe) my late sister Joanne |
Because it was Remembrance Day last Saturday, I’d put
out another Facebook request for war songs to feature in last Thursday night’s Lyrical Workers show. The response was, once
again, overwhelming. As with the Halloween show, I learned about some great
songs that I’d never before heard. Some of these war songs were quite dark,
dealing with post-traumatic stress and the general hell which is war. Last year
about this time – and I can’t believe a year has passed since I wrote the
report – I spoke of a friend of mine named Richard, who was a Viet Nam vet. A
musician friend suggested I write a song about this vet, and that will be one
of my projects for the new year.
Years ago, when Shauna’s dad was at Sunnybrook
Hospital, I began writing a song about his roommate on the stroke ward. Her
name was Juanita, and she was obviously a very sick woman. I remember her screaming a lot,
and she was clearly in emotional and physical distress. From time to time she
would settle down, and we sometimes spoke during her calmer moments. She’d come
from the Caribbean islands, she was herself a nurse (cruel irony), and she seemed to be quite
religious. That whole Sunnybrook stroke ward experience was enlightening, to say
the least, and I met a lot of interesting people that I might not have
otherwise met. In fact, the experience was in large part the impetus for my decision
to quit drinking. If you’ve ever been on a ward full of stroke victims, you
will know it is a special kind of hell on earth, both for the patients and for their
families. Exhausted one night, I remember taking a break in one of the sitting
areas on the ward, not far from Dad Taylor’s room, and Juanita was having one
of her waking nightmares. I could hear her angry voice from 50 yards away. It
was late summer I believe, and the weather was ripe for a powerful
thunderstorm. It had been oppressively hot and humid all day, and now the sun
was finally going down. The sky was a weird shade of pink, bordering on orange/yellow,
and there was an eerie stillness to the dusk. As I looked out the window, I had
the strong feeling that something bad was about to happen. While nothing did, the
seeds of a song were planted in my head at that moment, and I wrote down the
following lyric: “Juanita, this wasn’t what you had planned/ Broken promises
from your promised land/ Jaunita you’re doing the best that you can/ But you’re
already blowing in the coming wind.” The other day I finished a ninth draft of
that song, four years after its inception, and I think it’s finally nearing
completion. I suppose I needed some distance from the experience to dilute the overbearingly
personal nature of the song.
Back to Richard, the Viet Nam vet; he was another
scarred individual. By getting to know him, I came about as close as I ever had to comprehending the bad things war could do to a person. I read a book
years ago, written by news anchor Tom Brokaw, about the “Greatest Generation” of WW II vets,
and it seemed as if those veterans were generally stoics about their experiences. At
my real estate office in Buffalo, there was a partner who had been a
paratrooper during WW II, and I think he was emotionally affected by his
wartime experience. Richard was a different kind of screwed up though, and I
suspect that it matters whether the cause for the war is clearly just. In World
War II, the allies were fighting Hitler and the Nazis. I don’t know that the
endgame in Viet Nam was as clear, and I suspect that many of the vets who
fought in that war were as confused as I was. I worry about history repeating
itself, as it often does.
As a songwriter, I sometimes have no real
understanding of the subject matter about which I am writing. I am an observer,
and sometimes all I can do is tell the story of my experience, as clearly and succinctly as I
can. Many of my songs are not written to be played to an audience. They may
be the stepping stones to more universal songs, songs that might resonate with a
larger audience. I write in hopes that one day I might pen that song.
- Written by Jamie Oppenheimer c
2017 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
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