SONG FOR THE DISAPPEARED by Randall Stephen Hall

I wrote these words as far back as 2009. It was a hard thing to write and record. It took my emotions for a drive around dark corners and up to a place where tears could not help but come.

It has taken me a long time to work out how to play it in an accessible open way, live. I’m finally there. As I was growing up in the 1970s the Troubles were going on around me. I was becoming a young teenager not really understanding what was going or why. Feeling like an observer rather than a participant. Of course, I didn’t realise what I was soaking up or how deeply it would affect me, much later on.

Living on the northern outskirts of the city I heard stories of bodies being left out, like garbage, by the side of the road, for someone else to collect. Left out or lost in bog land. This song, from the perspective of a victim, looks at that experience.

This victim, still traumatized, doesn’t realize that he is dead. He tries to use an old battered telephone box, to phone his family, to let them know he is okay and is thinking of them. He goes through the same process on a daily basis, like a record, replaying itself. He fumbles in his pockets for change, only to find that his coins won’t fit into the coin slot. So like the coin, he cannot pass through the mechanism, the ritual and the process of death. He has become a series of knots waiting to be unravelled. Buried treasure with no map. His family and friends, still waiting. Waiting, still.

By Randall Stephen Hall 2009©

I’m lonely, so lonely

Some friendship I seek.

I’m down in the ground

Near the rock by the peak.

They bundled me out

Just after the bang.

I’d a headache for weeks

From their gun in the van.

I’m so lonely.

My name is young Billy Paul Anthony Drew

My face in the papers

Well I’m winking at you.

They lost my young soul

Way out in a bog.

No x marks the spot.

Do you own any dog?

For I’m lonely.

I’m lonely.

I’m so lonely.

Operator won’t you please

Won’t you pick up my call

I’m lonely, but I’m smiling at you.

No change in my pocket

But I’ve got a lovely view

Where I’m lonely.

I used to be young now

I once had a name.

I remember my role in old Harry’s game.

Dumped from a car like a seed in the ground.

Waiting to grow like a flower you’ve found.

I’m so lonely.

Chorus/end.