day 24 - a song that you want to play at your funeral

[osaraba]

Is it still called a funeral if you aren't being buried?

I'd like mine to be called an osaraba party, which I'm sure is atrocious grammar (because there's actually an idiomatic phrase for a real "going away party"), but whatever -- in Japanese, (o)saraba means a farewell (the "o" is an honorific used with certain words, in certain forms). ...and now you also know the meaning of my tag, yay!

So at my "funeral", there shouldn't be ONLY sad music played, but because I am overly enamored of epically sad music/lyrics in general, these are my top two choices; they are guaranteed to make (me) you(?) shed a tear.

Stan Rogers' Northwest Passage
Fave lines: tracing one warm line through a land so wild and savage

I love that line so much I had part of it tattooed on my wrist. And basically, the whole fucking song is an amazing adventure relived every time I hear it (lyrics here).

Sakamoto Kyu's 上を向いて歩こう (Ue wo Muite Arukou) ["I Look Up When I Walk"]
Fave lines: ue wo muite arukou / namida ga koborenai you ni / nakinagara arukuu / hitoribotchi no yoru (i look up as i walk / so that the tears won't fall / though the tears well up as i walk / tonight i'm alone)
Japanese romaji & English translation of lyrics here.

I can never articulately describe how sad and beautiful this song is and it bugs me SO EFFING MUCH that it was called "Sukiyaki Song" in the 60s when it crossed over to the US, and then that the "English version(s)" fell so flat in comparison to the original.

List of all days.

Comments

[gelbwax.livejournal.com]

Okay hold on can we talk about Northwest Passage because in eighth grade my class (22 kids plus teacher) went on a schooner voyage in Maine's penobscot bay for 10 days with just us and the crew and the captain and our teacher's guitar and we just played and sang that song and a few others (Mary Ellen Carter for example) and this was just our jam and now I can't listen to that without getting nostalgic for being 13 and carefree and sailing in the almost open ocean. Yeah.

Hi!

[osaraba]

OMG I'd have loved to go on a 10-day schooner voyage playing nothing but Northwest Passage nonstop on a guitar! Because it's seriously one of my favorite songs, IT IS SO ADVENTUROUS AND SAD AND LOVELY. I get nostalgic for like, PIONEERING, or something, which it's not like I've ever done in my life, but that's what I feel like. <3