Bài hát Not What You See Báo Lỗi

Not What You See




[Music & Words: Jon Oliva, Paul O'Neill]


No life's so short it can't turn around

You can't spend your life living underground

For from above you don't hear a sound

And I'm out here, waiting

I don't understand what you want me to be

It's the dark you're hating, it's not who I am

But I know that it's all that you see


No life's so short that it never learns

No flame so small that it never burns

No page so sure that it never turns

And I'm out here, waiting

I don't understand what you want me to be

It's the dark you're hating, it's not who I am

But I know that it's all that you see


[bridge]

Can you live your life in a day, putting every moment in play?

Never hear a word that they say as the wheels go around


Tell me if you win would it show - in a thousand years, who would know?

As a million lives come and go on this same piece of ground


[simultaneously]


Can you live your life in a day

I've been waiting

Putting every moment in play?

Never hear a word that they say

I don't understand what you want me to be

As the wheels go around

Tell me if you win would it show

It's the dark you're hating

In a thousand years, who would know?

As a million lives come and go

It's not who I am, but it is what you see

On this same piece of ground


[simultaneously]


[1.]

I've been waiting

I don't understand what you want me to be

It's the dark you're hating

It's not who I am, but it is what you see


[2.]

Can you live your life in a day

Putting every moment in play?

Never hear a word that they say

As the wheels go around

Tell me if you win would it show

In a thousand years, who would know?

As a million lives come and go

On this same piece of ground


[3.]

Tell me would you really want to

See me leave this night without you

Would you ever look about you

Wondering where we might be

New York is so far away now

Tokyo, Berlin and Moscow

Only dreams from here but somehow

One day that world we will see


[simultaneously again, except substitute this for stanza 1 and]

[clip last three syllables of the last line of stanzas 2 and 3]


[1.]

I don't understand

I don't understand

I don't understand

I don't understand

I don't understand

I don't understand

I don't understand

I don't understand...


[together, immediately]


...what I see.


[solo]


[coda]

I swear on tomorrow, if you take this chance

Our lives are this moment, the music - the dance

And here in this labyrinth of lost mysteries

I close my eyes on this night and you're all that I see


You're all that I see


THEN THEY LEFT THE SQUARE TOGETHER

NEATH THE FADING FIRE'S LIGHT

AND THE GARGOYLE WATCHED

AND WONDERED

ON THAT WINTER'S SILENT NIGHT


AND SO OUR STORY'S OVER

AND FOR ANY ONE WHO CARES

AS FOR THE OLD GARGOYLE

I BELIEVE THAT HE'S STILL THERE





Story.

In the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo, there is a town square surrounded

by buildings that were constructed during the middle ages. The

square has a beautiful stone stone fountain at its center and at one

corner there is a thousand year old church with a gargoyle carved

into its belfry. Now this gargoyle, for the last thousand years, has

spent all his time trying to comprehend the human emotions of laughter

and sorrow. But even after a millennium of contemplation, these most

curious of human attributes remain a total mystery to our stone friend.


Our story begins in the year of 1990; the Berlin Wall has just fallen,

communism has collapsed and for the first time since the Roman

Empire, Yugoslavia finds itself a free nation. Serdjan Aleskovic cannot

believe his good fortune to be alive and young at such a moment. The

future and the happiness of all seem assured in what must surely be

"the best of times".


However, even as Serdjan celebrates with his fellow countrymen, there

are little men with little minds who are already busy sowing the seeds

of hate between neighbors. Young and impressionable Serdjan joins

some of his friends in a Serbian Militia Unit and eventually finds himself

in the hills outside of Sarajevo firing mortar shells nightly in the city.

Meanwhile in Sarajevo itself, Katrina Brasic, a young Muslim girl, finds

herself buying weapons from a group of arms merchants and then

joining her comrades firing in the hills around the city.


The years pass by and it is now late November 1994. An old man who

had left Yugoslavia many decades before, has now returned to the city

of his birth, only to find it in ruins. As the season's first snowfall

begins,

he stands in the town square, looks toward the heavens and explains

that when the Yugoslavians prayed for change, this is not what they

intended.


As the old man finished his prayer, the sun begins to set and the first

shells of the evening's artillery barrage are starting to arc overhead. But

instead of heading for the shelters with the rest of the civilians, he climbs

atop the rubble that used to be the fountain and taking out his cello,

starts to play Mozart as the shells explode around him. From this night

forward he would repeat this ritual every evening. And every evening

Serdjan and Katrina each find themselves listening to the thoughts of

Mozart and Beethoven as the drift between the explosions across no

man's land.


Though the winter does its best to cover the landscape with a blanket

of temporary innocence, the war only escalates in violence and brutality.

One day in late December, Serdjan on a patrol in Sarajevo, comes

across a schoolyard where a recent exploding shell has left the ground

littered with the bodies of young children. It is one thing to drop shells

into a mortar and quite another to see where they land. Long after

Serdjan returns to his own lines, he cannot get the faces of the

children out of his mind. Realizing that what he has been participating

in is not the glorious nation building that their leaders had described,

but rather a path to mutual oblivion, he decides right then and there

that he can no longer be a part of this, that you cannot build a future

on the bodies of others. At the first opportunity, he resolves that he

will desert.


Sitting in his bunker on December 24th, he listens to the sounds of

Christmas carols from the old cello player mingling with the sounds

of war. Katrina, on the other side of the battlefield, is also listening.

It had just stopped snowing and the clouds had given way to reveal a

beautiful star-filled sky when suddenly the cellos player's music

abruptly ceases. Fearing the worst, Serdjan and Katrina both do

something quite foolish and from their respectives sides, start to

make their ways across no man's land toward the town square.

Arriving at the exact same moment, they see one another. Instinctively

realizing that they are both there for the same reason, they do not

start to fight, but instead, together walk slowly to the fountain. There

they find the old man lying dead in the snow, his face covered with

blood, his cello lying smashed and broken at his side.


Then without warning, a single drop liquid falls from the cloudless

sky, wiping some of the blood off the old man's cheek. Serdjan looks

up, but he can see nothing except the stone gargoyle high up on the

church belfry. Overcome by what he has seen this night, he decides

that he must leave this war immediately. Turning to the Muslim girl

he asks her to come with him, but now all she sees is his Serbian

uniform. Pouring out his feelings, he explains that he is not what she

thinks that he is. Eventually winning her to his side, they leave the

night together.