"Heroes"

I assigned my students to write a 400-word paper about a song that was influential to them.  I wanted them to listen to the lyrics and think about how they were emotionally impacted by them.  I also wanted them to analyze what they thought the songwriter's intentions were behind the lyrics.  I just assigned the paper today and am hoping that I get some pretty good responses.  Hopefully the students will be able to look at music in a way that they hitherto never had before.

Anyway, the whole assignment made me think about my own answer to the prompt.  There are so many songs that have had a huge impact in my life and the hard part is only choosing one.  The song that didn't go away was "Heroes" by David Bowie.  There's so much to enjoy and think about in that 6-minute love opus.  First, there's the quotation marks in the title.  It seems as if Bowie is mocking the concept of being a hero.  His story is about two lovers who are separated by clashing political idealogies in occupied Berlin.  The couple live on opposite sides of the Berlin Wall and yet meet everyday to just be together.  It's kind of like a modern-day Romeo and Juliet, except so much more real.  But it's something so simple, isn't it, being in love?  What, Bowie is wondering, could possibly be heroic about these two seemingly anonymous people?

Bowie saw these two meeting everyday and got to wondering.  If physical impediments - barbed wire, ten foot walls - weren't enough to stop them, and the fear of persecution did nothing to prevent their meeting, then aren't they the real heroes?  They didn't have heroic dreams - "You can be mean, and I'll drink all the time" - but it didn't matter.  Their real dream was just being together, being lovers, "and that is that."  They wanted to live a simple, normal, everyday kind of life like so many before them had and so many more after had done.  Something earthly was not going to get in their way.  Who knows where it will lead, but these two didn't really care.  Everyday that they met at that wall, they were heroes.  They spit in the face of fascism and socked it to all those who thought love couldn't cross certain barriers.  They taught, through Bowie's eloquent lyricism, that love is the only thing that crosses barriers.

It's a simple story, though I'm not even sure if I explained it effectively.  But the point of the matter is that it's true, in my life at least.  There are certain avenues that we can't get into.  There are going to be those places that will be off limits.  But not when it comes to love.  It transcends.  Worldly problems can only stop so much.  Bowie knew this...he saw it firsthand.  Perhaps he even lived it, or something like it at least.  It's an ideal that is often forgotten but never forgets.  Pretty good ending, eh?