So, Beyoncé’s song I Was Here, written by Dianne Warren in the aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on New York fifteen years ago…

The song has a circularity.  Someone appears to be looking back on great achievements, while also feeling that their success lies somewhere in the future.

Perhaps the spirit of the song lies in that grammatically beguiling line “I did, I’ve done, everything that I wanted.”  “I did, I’ve done” recurs throughout the song as a kind of chorus. I did and I’ve done are not two ways of saying the same thing.  I did is the past perfect, used to talk about specific things in the past. “I did a number of great things.”  A list of achievements could then follow, detailed on a CV. But “I have done” is a construction known as the present perfect, used to talk about experiences without saying precisely when they happened, or even what they were: “I have done some great things,” said with a faraway look in the eye.  You get the sense that in summing up the significance of your life, any specific experience starts to become problematic.  If you’re a singer like Beyoncé, do you point to some particular song you sang, even though songs become unfashionable, and some people don’t think pop songs are worth much anyway.  Somehow, specific claims to fame fail to measure up.  In their place comes a vaguer yearning for distinction. In fact, the idea of achievement becomes so vague that you get the line “I want to say that I lived each day until I die.”  Well you could say everyone manages that.  In place of the self-aggrandising song of a famous singer wallowing in their greatness you get a much more humane reflection on how relative the idea of achievement is.  Even the humblest of people fulfil the hope of living each day until they die.

I Was Here is the song in which a celebrity culture reflected on itself and saw the bigger picture.

As a footnote, the music of I Was Here is in E minor, one of the most frequently used keys in pop music, since it suits the guitar very well.  Building on this, the song uses a variation of one of the most familiar chord progressions in popular music, known as the 50s Progresson, so-called because it was widely used in the 1950s and 1960s.  The 50s Progression is G-Em-C-D.  The chord pattern for I Was Here  is Em-C-D-Dsus-Em-C-Em-C.  The suspended D chord, or Dsus, is another familiar feature of pop music.  Technicalities aside, the point is I Was Here is quintessential pop music, using archetypal patterns familiar to everyone.  If there is something special here, it is a quality of the widest range.

(Thanks to Rob for recommending this song to me)

 

I wanna leave my footprint on the sands of timeKnow there was something that,

Meant something that I left behind

When I leave this world, I’ll leave no regrets,

Leave something to remember, so they won’t forget

 

I was here

I lived, I loved

I was here

I did, I’ve done, everything that I wanted

And it was more than I thought it would be

I will leave my mark so everyone will know

I was here

 

I want to say I lived each day, until I die

And know that I meant something in somebody’s life

The hearts I have touched will be the proof that I leave

That I made a difference, and this world will see

 

I was here

I lived, I loved

I was here

I did, I’ve done, everything that I wanted

And it was more than I thought it would be

I will leave my mark so everyone will know

 

I was here

I lived, I loved

I was here

I did, I’ve done, everything that I wanted

And it was more than I thought it would be

I will leave my mark so everyone will know

I was here

 

I just want them to know

That I gave my all, did my best

Brought someone to happiness

Left this world a little better just because

 

I was here

 

I was here

I lived, I loved

I was here

I did, I’ve done, everything that I wanted

And it was more than I thought it would be

I will leave my mark so everyone will know

I was here.

 

I lived

(I loved), I was here

(I did), I did

(I’ve done), I was here

(I lived), I lived

(I loved)

I was here

 

I did

(I’ve done)

 

I was here

 

Written by Diane Eve Warren • Copyright © BMG Rights Management US, LLC, DO Write Music LLC, Downtown Music Publishing LLC

Battle of Britain Day, 15th September, commemorates the most intense day in the aerial battle over Britain in the summer of 1940.  A memorial to pilots who fought in the Battle of Britain has been built at Capel le Ferne near Folkestone in Kent, an area where a great deal of heavy fighting took place in the skies overhead. There is a visitors’ centre, a Spitfire and a Hurricane aircraft, a flag mast which stood at Biggin Hill airfield during the battle, and the memorial itself, which consists of a huge representation of a propeller laid out in the grass, with a statue of a young pilot in the middle looking out to sea. I found walking around the memorial a moving experience. The pilot  looks reflective and peaceful, as though it’s all over now and he can sit back and think about the past. There is also a sense, however, that he is still watching the sky for enemy aircraft. He is in full flight kit, ready to go. If the call came  he would jump up and run to the Spitfire parked outside the visitors’ centre where people are having cups of tea. This is a thoughtful memorial, fittingly reflective, with an immediacy  which suggests the atmosphere of those months in the summer of 1940. The memorial is one of tranquility, and yet there is still a feeling that any moment now…

The overriding impression, however, is the peaceful one.  Some people, I fear, now scan the skies for illusory enemies. It is useful to reiterate following Battle of Britain day, that many of the pilots who flew with the RAF in 1940 were Europeans.  It is shameful that Poles find themselves the victims of attacks since the European referendum, when Polish pilots played a vital role in helping win the battle. There might not have been a Britain to take a vote on European membership if it hadn’t been for Polish, Czech, Belgian and French pilots.  We assume the pilot sitting at Capel le Ferne is British, when actually he could be Polish.  We should remember that.

 

I visited Whitby Abbey this summer, and found a group of youngsters willing to dress up in many layers of black in thirty degree heat.  They were paying homage to Bram Stoker’s Dracula which has scenes set at the Abbey. Admiring such commitment  I read the book, and found myself introduced to a very proper Victorian gentleman named Jonathan Harker. As he travels east across Europe, he notices the trains get later and later. He can’t even imagine what the trains are like in China. It is a bit of a shock, therefore, when our conventional Englishman falls into the hands of a vampire living in a brooding castle.

Meanwhile, back in England Mr Harker’s fiancé is a Victorian stereotype of what women should be. Mina does her best to live up to this crazy ideal. She looks after her traumatised husband, following his escape from Dracula, and cleverly takes disparate records of vampire sightings, and puts them together to produce a coherent picture of what’s going on. But despite this contribution, her husband, and his group of male vampire-fighting vigilantes, announce in the most honourable of terms that a weak woman can have no part in fighting the enemy. Excluded from events, kept in the dark for her own peace of mind, Mina finds it difficult to sleep, no doubt the result of a suppressed sense of injustice. She allows the men to offer her a sleeping draught to help deal with nervous insomnia. Tellingly, it is while she is vulnerable, sleeping her drugged sleep, that a vengeful Dracula arrives in her bedroom.

Bram Stoker quietly pulls apart the apparent morality of his society, and shows how ordinary, proper life can actually push people into the land of the living dead. This was the aspect of Dracula I admired, equivalent to that modern Shaun of the Dead irony, where zombies invade an English suburb populated by people who are pretty much zombies anyway. Bram Stoker’s sentimentality is cloying at times, particularly in the second half, but thankfully there is always that undercurrent of satire, showing that Dracula’s castle isn’t so far from the Home Counties.

The Bram Stoker fans I met this summer were from Birmingham.  They looked great and kindly allowed me to take a few photos.