The only version of this song that I’ve ever heard is by This Mortal Coil, a collaboration of European musicians that put out several recordings in the 1980’s and 1990’s. A quick poke around the internet today taught me that the origin of the song is a poem by Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet Ran called “The Little Dead Girl.”
Awesome, right?
The poem was put to music by Pete Seeger and James Waters and then recorded by multiple artists including The Byrds. This Mortal Coil’s version was released in 1991.
I’m only seven although I died
In Hiroshima long ago
I’m seven now as I was then
When children die they do not grow
It’s the most haunting song on “Blood,” a CD of 21 haunting songs with haunting female vocals and ethereal accompaniments and beautifully tortured lyrics. Did I mention that it’s haunting? I have to be in a very, very special mood to listen to this CD.
Add to the hauntingness of the music the fact that the CD was given to me by my friend Tony Cornejo in the mid-90’s. He was one of the first people I met after I moved to Los Angeles. Lisa and I frequented a few dive bars in Pasadena, if you could even call them dive bars, being Pasadena. One night we were at the 35er, and I met Tony, and he said he had a band and he was looking for a vocalist for a new track he was working on, and I liked to sing and since I had moved to LA to seek my fame and fortune, I was game. Tony was shorter than me and had grown up in Glendale and knew LA inside and out. One night when I was driving home from somewhere I got lost in what I call “The Hollywood Triangle” where the 101, the 134, and the 170 all sort of intersect each other. It was perhaps 1996, so I didn’t have an interactive GPS-led map with me. I didn’t even have the Thomas Guide with me at the time for some reason, and it was late and I was very lost. So I stopped at a pay phone and called Tony and told him where I was and he guided me home.
Less than two years later he died.
He just died. He had been in a small airplane accident about ten years earlier, and he had a plate in his head, he had told me. When I found out about his death, we had lost touch. He had gone traveling around the world and sent me postcards from other countries. That Christmas the card I sent him came back to me, address unknown. I called him but the phone number was disconnected. Then I called the company where he worked. The receptionist paused after I asked to speak to him and then put me on hold. A man came on the line and told me Tony had passed away. I didn’t know any of his friends or colleagues, and there wasn’t the internet the way there is now, so there is no way I could have heard. The man was so sorry to have to tell me and he did the best he could to explain what happened and when.
Years later I learned firsthand how awful it was to be that guy at that moment, of course.
I’m so grateful to Tony for having been my friend and for introducing me to This Mortal Coil and the Cocteau Twins and The The and his own band, Elysium. I think about him often, but I can’t listen to the music very much because then I get angry about a young life cut off so abruptly. It’s enough that it’s inside me. I can hear the tunes in my head and it makes me happy that someone like him ever happened to me at all.
Damn girl, you need to start a theme with something that makes you happy!
That’s a nice post,My heart is with you.