It Ain't Keats, But It Hits As Hard

I usually hate it when people post song lyrics in their e-mail or instant messages. Especially because most people pick terrible songs, like Dave Matthews or Spice Girls. However, I will break this normally firm rule in favor of the song "Brothers in Arms" by Dire Straits. Indeed, in this case I have done more than post lyrics, I've put up a link to the video, because I am a hypocrite and this song is one of the few that can make me emotional in any sense. I am ordinarily a robot about these kinds of things, but when I hear those last words, it chokes me up. If you really want to see craftsmanship at its finest, Aaron Sorkin used it in the season two finale of The West Wing, where the President has to admit that he covered up his MS and announce his intentions to seek a second term. It's quite a stirring scene, one of the best written by a man who has written so many great scenes. Watching the President's senior advisers walk through the West Wing of the White House together, marching beside a man who has given them so much, whom they view as a father, it recalls one of Sorkin's central themes in his work: the office as a family. These men and women are less coworkers are really are brothers in arms. This is that rarest of songs that can pull a sad string in me. If you watch that West Wing scene or hear this song, and upon reaching those last lines you don't feel that sense of melancholy or regret over the tragic inevitability of things like war or those who sacrifice so much for so few, then you're a cynic and you've lost that empathy that makes living wonderful. I've long since abandoned the point of being over the top, and I know it isn't cool to be so moved by a Dire Straits song, but I am. Sue me.

Now the sun's gone to hell
And the moon's riding high
Let me bid you farewell
Every man has to die
But it's written in the starlight
And every line on your palm
We're fools to make war
On our brothers in arms