This Is This

I was interested to find out that Simon Armitage, the man widely tipped as the next Poet Laureate, has written his most high-profile work yet, a poem called Out Of The Blue which will be broadcast today to mark the fifth anniversary of the World Trade Center attacks. You can read his poem here.

Now the wierd thing about this is that three years ago I wrote a song called Out Of The Blue, which you can hear here on broadband and here on dialup.
Here’s the story behind it.

The song has a verse which goes:

A couple of times, coming down the wire,
look to the west with the skies on fire.
Then again, there’s another day.
It’s not the cost of what was lost but what needs to be done.

The word times was originally planes in the working version but I changed it because the verse needed to work within the context of the song, which is about coincidences and events that come along unannounced and change our lives, rather than one about terrorist attacks. Also, planes was too obvious and dramatic. Generally I don’t like political songs, although notable exceptions are Wallflower by Peter Gabriel and Strange Fruit by Abel Meeropol.

Coming down the wire relates to the delivery methods of the news business I work in and skies on fire is obvious but also it’s a tip of the hat to a line in James Taylor’s “Gone To Carolina”.

It’s not the cost of what was lost but what needs to be done. That’s a bit of my philosophy, but I’ll say more about that tomorrow.

But the point is this:

I wrote a song about coincidences and someone else later writes a poem with the same references with the same title, making it a double coincidence.

Unless future poets laureate are trawling through my archives in a bid for glory.

Also on This Is This
“The Beatles?! Pah! Don’t talk to me about Paul McsoddingCartney.”
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