BORN... to be ALIVE!

Remember phonogram records? The song by the abovementioned title was the very first 45 R.P.M., seven-inch “single” I ever bought. Despite all the scratches over its surface (I was only twelve in 1979) indicating the amount I played it, I’d never ever thought about its very powerfully delivered lyrics.

Patrick Hernandez’s hit of 1979 is actually videographically very poor, replete with horrendous lip-syncing and unimaginative choreography, but its humming disco groove and strident in-your-face message of truth and passion for a different life are astounding and those attributes alone carried it over the pop glacier of success. Lyrically it’s abundantly simple—almost superficial. But it’s not the song I’m so rapt about. It’s its simple message.

The song, I believe, is about the man or woman that thumbs their nose at the wide and common way of life—the person who “gets” life from the vein of the spiritual, not simply just the material. He or she is captivated by the stars and the power, wisdom and truth of energy, its flow and such forth.

They see life from a vivacious perspective. Open eyed, eared and hearted this person is simply... born to be alive. Every living moment, give or take, they focus on ‘the different perspective.’ They’re alive spiritually and they exist in several realms simultaneously—spiritually awake to the voices of perception and the heartbeat of life’s underbelly. As we view them, they hold open the gates of that existence to us also.

We’re born to be alive. It’s good to be alive.

That ‘alive-ness’ Hernandez sings about is deadened to us much of the time; in our work, our boredom, our hurried day-to-day lives. Yet it need not be.

Without the time taken out to truly live the ‘born to be alive’ philosophy we miss it’s time-held message for us. It’s not until death strikes close by that we realise we only have so much time, and that therefore it’s due us to live.

A thousand different spectres then take place—we’re swamped in choice. But then it’s really only a case of one thing: just start. A whole world has now opened up to us!

© 2010 S. J. Wickham.