In 1991 I moved to Bangladesh, as a jaded 13 year old harboring murky identity issues. I went from a Pennsylvania middle school of almost 1000 kids to an international school with about 400 kids in total from K-12. It was quite the shift. My 7th grade had about 40 kids in it, representing probably 15-20 different countries. In retrospect, those years in Dhaka made me who I am today, in the sense that I learned to make friends across ethnic lines, with people who didn't even speak my language. Instead of spending my pubescent years desperately trying to fit into the vicious cliques of teenage American suburbia I was suddenly a welcome addition to a motley crew of bratty international kids eying the world through transplanted eyes. It was beautiful and surreal and a huge awakening.
I made friends with a group of beautiful girls, as teenage boys are wont to do. I think they let me into their circle because I was a non-threatening, somewhat clownish little runt who was entertaining to have around. Of course, I was also voted "Most Teddy-Bear Like" for my yearbook 2 years running, but that's a story for another day. I bring up this lovely coterie of companions because they used to invite along with them to eat dinner and sing Karaoke at a Thai restaurant called Sawasdee. I'd never been to a karaoke restaurant before, but I learned really quickly that it was a whole lot of fun, even if I never got up the guts to grab the mic. My friends would sing the kind of cheesy ballads teenage girls adore, like Richard Marx's "Right Here Waiting" or the "Theme from Ice Castles," or maybe "Lean On Me" if the spirit moved them. On a couple of occasion I remember my friend Andrea singing "Winds of Change," a rock ballad by The Scorpions that had particular meaning to those of us coming into an adult awareness in 1991... This song, by a German rock band, is one of the top 50 best selling singles of all time, and represents the huge surge of hope and optimism that accompanied the fall of the Berlin wall and the end of the Soviet Union... I remembered it as I walked past Red Square this afternoon, as "I followed the Moscva, down to Gorky Park, listening to the winds..."
...it's funny how some music marinates in your mind and takes on new meanings over time...
I made friends with a group of beautiful girls, as teenage boys are wont to do. I think they let me into their circle because I was a non-threatening, somewhat clownish little runt who was entertaining to have around. Of course, I was also voted "Most Teddy-Bear Like" for my yearbook 2 years running, but that's a story for another day. I bring up this lovely coterie of companions because they used to invite along with them to eat dinner and sing Karaoke at a Thai restaurant called Sawasdee. I'd never been to a karaoke restaurant before, but I learned really quickly that it was a whole lot of fun, even if I never got up the guts to grab the mic. My friends would sing the kind of cheesy ballads teenage girls adore, like Richard Marx's "Right Here Waiting" or the "Theme from Ice Castles," or maybe "Lean On Me" if the spirit moved them. On a couple of occasion I remember my friend Andrea singing "Winds of Change," a rock ballad by The Scorpions that had particular meaning to those of us coming into an adult awareness in 1991... This song, by a German rock band, is one of the top 50 best selling singles of all time, and represents the huge surge of hope and optimism that accompanied the fall of the Berlin wall and the end of the Soviet Union... I remembered it as I walked past Red Square this afternoon, as "I followed the Moscva, down to Gorky Park, listening to the winds..."
...it's funny how some music marinates in your mind and takes on new meanings over time...
Still love this song. Can't help it.
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