23 August 2021

Music Monday - Tomorrow is Today

So back when I was in college, I was in a play my senior year called "The Shadowbox." The director chose wonderful music for the opening, intermission, etc. and most of it dealt with the same theme of the play - a look at families in a hospice, each dealing with impending death in different ways. I didn't know anything about anything back then, but boy did I think I was ready to play a 40-something mother of a teenager who was visiting a husband dying in hospice care. 

This song drifts in and out of my life, as do my other two favorites from that play, but today this one spoke to me about my upcoming Nanowrimo project - the sequel to Rift, and the continuing story of a young woman going too far into her gaming universe to be able to hang on to her real life. I've been thinking about Em and Alex a lot lately, and Lex, Alex's avatar in the game and alter ego. And this line sort of jumped out at me in the car: And someday, when your dreams are leaving you, I'll still believe in you. There's sort of a Peter Pan and Tinkerbell quality about videogame characters - do they exist when no one is playing the game? Do they remember things and people? 

If Em stops seeing Lex as a sentient being, does he revert to binary code?

Anyway, this is from what I think to be one of Billy Joel's greatest albums, Cold Spring Harbor, and it always takes me back to a dusty theatre in a small college in Tennessee...I wonder if my Maggie is still walking the boards and still grieving a life she hasn't quite lost yet?


Tomorrow is Today
by Billy Joel

I've been livin' for the moment
But I just can't have my way
And I'm afraid to go to sleep
'Cause tomorrow is today

People tell me life is sweeter
But I don't hear what they say
Nothing comes to change my life
So tomorrow is today

I don't care to know the hour
'Cause it's passing anyway
I don't have to see tomorrow
'Cause I saw it yesterday

So I listen for an answer
But the feeling seems to stay
And what's the use of always dreaming
If tomorrow is today

Still I'm waiting for the morning
But it feels so far away
And you don't need the love I'm giving
So tomorrow is today

Oh, my, I'm goin' to the river
Gonna take a ride and the lord will deliver me
Made my bed, I'm gonna lie in it
If you don't come, sure gonna die in it

Too late, too much given
I've seen a lot of life and I'm damn sick of livin' it
I keep hopin' that you will pass my way

And some day if your dreams are leavin' you
I'll still believe in you

I don't care to know the hour
'Cause it's passing anyway
I don't have to see tomorrow
'Cause I saw it yesterday

Though I'm living and I'm singing
And although my hands still play
Soon enough it will all be over
'Cause tomorrow is today

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