#morning setup

Today I followed up by listening to Sign of the Times all the way through, also an excellent decision.

1) “Ojos Así” is still a banger, and I still find it invigorating to hear a verse in Arabic in a song that was released in Spanish and English. (I studied Arabic in my last year of college in the hope of being able to do a project interviewing folk musicians in South West Asia and North Africa, but neither my Arabic nor my French were anywhere near good enough to travel with. I have lost most of what I learned, but I can still recognize snippets and get excited about it.)

And then "Any King's Shilling" came on. I still knew all the words to this plaintive song where an IRA member asks his friend who's in the Loyalist army not to go out that night, and please not to ask any questions about it, but I also knew a little more Northern Irish history than I did in the early '90s, and I had to go outside to cry for a minute.

“Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, just remember that all the people in this world haven’t had the advantages that you’ve had.”