we made wings of our oars for the mad flight

11.17.03 - 1:57 p.m.

My uncle Gary gave me a record album called In Harmony 2 when I was a little kid. It's amazing how quickly one grows up, though, how mature one is by 9 or 10, because a few years later - or less than a few years later, I don't know - he was buying me Culture Club albums (I remember studying the band pictures on the album, trying to figure out which one was Boy George. And I thought that the picture of Boy George was actually a girl, so that couldn't be him.) and I had a crush on George Michael. It was quite the victory when we convinced the Cotillion teachers to let us Jitterbug to the song Jitterbug by Wham!. (Hmmm: grammar dilemma. If a word actually ends with a punctuation mark - a la the ! at the end of Wham! - does one need to punctuate the sentence? Obviously, I chose to do so, as I felt that the ! would be misleading. My sentence wasn't an exclamation, only the name of the band. Anyway...)

This wasn't supposed to be about Wham! It was supposed to be about In Harmony 2. My favorite song on that album was Ginny the Flying Girl by Janis Ian. My parents have one of Janis Ian's record albums from the 1970s, and I like that, too. She has a nice, powerful voice and isn't willing to sing passionately in that folk-chick-I-really-mean-this-oeuvre. Her songs were singable, but kind of trite? But still: fine songs, with genuine lyrics rather than the same three words repeated in whatever combination the songwriter chose.

Periodically over the years, Ginny the Flying Girl bubbling up to the surface and percolated in the forefront of my thoughts, but I've never been able to remember the song to my satisfaction. Hmm, duh, that's what the internet is for. Almost anything one wishes to find may be found here. Without further ado, Ginny the Flying Girl:

Ginny the flying girl, wanted to see the world
Her parents were poor and they couldn't afford
To send her away for a whirl
She waited until they slept and into the night she crept
With only the stars and the cold light of Mars
Ginny took off like a jet

She rode through the sky like an elephant's eye
Like the stars in a thundering herd
And when she came down
All the world had turned 'round
All that the groundpeople heard
Was 'oh, for the life of a bird'

She lived in a tiny room
Surrounded by huge balloons
The covers would fly past her magical eye
And the pillows saluted the moon
At night when the lights went out
She'd take to the sky and shout
'Hey Milky Way, lead me on 'til the day
'Says hello to the night's turnabout'

She rode through the sky like an elephant's eye
Like the stars in a thundering herd
And when she came down
All the world had turned 'round
All that the groundpeople heard
Was 'oh, for the life of a bird'

Whenever the world won't bend
Whenever I need a friend
I just close my eyes and I reach for the sky
And I know I can make it again
Whenever my dreams run dry
Just when I need to cry
Whenever it all looks too big, or too tall
I remember that I can fly

She rode through the sky like an elephant's eye
Like the stars in a thundering herd
And when she came down
All the world had turned 'round
All that the groundpeople heard
Was 'oh, for the life of a bird'
Oh, for the life of a bird
Oh, for the life of a bird...

I suppose I could use some of Ginny's, uhm, life philosophy, learn how to close my eyes and reach for the sky. Maybe I'll work on that. But although that's the "lesson" of the song for kids, I adore the verse before that, the middle verse:

She lived in a tiny room
Surrounded by huge balloons
The covers would fly past her magical eye
And the pillows saluted the moon
At night when the lights went out
She'd take to the sky and shout
'Hey Milky Way, lead me on 'til the day
'Says hello to the night's turnabout'

If you have to wonder why I love it... well. There's nothing more to say. I just love that song. Absolutely love it.