The General

With Remembrance Day so heavy in everyone's hearts at the minute, a song has been echoing around and around in mine. 'The General' by Dispatch. I fell in love with this song for the music, the rhythms, the beats, but then I heard the words and I just fell deeper. The last few months it has just been on almost constant repeat inside my head.

The song tells of a seasoned general in the army who wakes up on the morning of a great battle and tells his men to leave him, there is no life in following someone's orders, dying for someone else. They are young men, they should be living.

As the general talks to his men;

"He said: I have seen the others, And I have discovered, That this fight is not worth fighting. And I have seen their mothers, And I will no other, To follow me where I'm going. So take a shower, Shine your shoes. You got no time to lose, You are young men, You must be living."

Music is a soundtrack to my life. In a deeper way than normal. When something happens to me, I have a song that makes that situation make sense; love, heartbreak, moments of happiness and pain, joy and sadness, everything I go through I remember through the song I linked it to. And if I can't find one that's right, then I get out my guitar and I write one myself. Music gives me other people's experiences, other people's insights and I find my way through with their help, or I share in the happiness that we have both created individually.

This song captured my view on life - Don't waste your time following in someone else's footsteps, and I love it for that. I love it for it's strong sense of decency and the strength behind the words; for the way this is a story, not just a song; and lately the line "You are young men, you must be living" has struck a chord.

I am young. And I'm going to enjoy living.