Ordinary World

Came in from a rainy Thursday
on the avenue
Thought I heard you talking softly
I turned on the lights, the TV
and the radio
Still I can't escape the ghost of you

Those words I have heard a hundred times or more without actually listening to them. They come from "Ordinary World" a 1993 song written by Duran Duran about moving on from the grief of losing their colleague and friend, Simon Le Bon. I know it more fondly as the Aurora version, sung by the beautiful Naimee Coleman, an anthem to many a dance party I've attended over the years.

What has happened to it all?
Crazy, some'd say
Where is the life that I recognize?
Gone away

Equally however, it is an anthem for moving on in life and overcoming the obstacles that seem to want to hold us in the past.

But I won't cry for yesterday
There's an ordinary world
Somehow I have to find

And as I try to make my way
To the ordinary world
I will learn to survive

Yearning for the past is where I currently reside and I know that I need to move on from yesterday to get back to the ordinary world.

Passion or coincidence
Once prompted you to say
"Pride will tear us both apart"

Well now pride's gone out the window
Cross the rooftops, run away
Left me in the vacuum of my heart

Many of my relationships have changed, work, love, family, friends, life - a beautiful portrait on canvas that now seems extraordinarily, almost hauntingly, empty and distant. Yet it calls for me to start new, to paint over it; to wreak havoc with it's beauty. A chance to create something new.

What is happening to me?
Crazy, some'd say
Where is my friend when I need you most?
Gone away

Death, divorce, a lover's parting or even a fallout with a friend leaves us empty and hollow. Selfishly we ask, 'What about me? Where are you when I need you the most?' And so, my friend is gone.

But I won't cry for yesterday
There's an ordinary world
Somehow I have to find
And as I try to make my way
To the ordinary world
I will learn to survive

We want our lives to be extraordinary. But sometimes there are moments when we feel extraordinarily alone, extraordinarily empty, or extraordinarily lifeless. At these times we just want to find our way back to the ordinary world.

Papers in the roadside
Tell of suffering and greed
Here today, forgot tomorrow
Ooh, here besides the news
Of holy war and holy need
Ours is just a little sorrowed talk

And how I might feel in this time of grief eclipses anything that is happening around me. But my sorrow and hurt is insignificant against the catastrophic suffering that others might face; those who have no concept of the beautiful ordinary world that I am a part of, and from which I have silently drifted.

And I don't cry for yesterday
There's an ordinary world
Somehow I have to find
And as I try to make my way
To the ordinary world
I will learn to survive

So I will survive; I do survive; we are all survivors of the ordinary world.

Every one is my world
I will learn to survive
Any one is my world
I will learn to survive
Any one is my world
Every one is my world

And because we survive in the ordinary world, we are together and we are not alone after all.
Every one is a part of my beautiful ordinary world.