Song of the Year

 I plan to share my favourite albums of the past year, as I have done in years past. But first, I thought I'd share my Song of the Year. And in 2020, the year of the plague, no song cut deeper than the one that explicitly linked the plight of health care workers today with that of soldiers under fire, two sets of otherwise ordinary people merely trying to function while being subjected to unimaginable levels of stress, terror, and desperation. Who could ever be prepared for such a thing? How would that even happen? And enduring it all, somehow, hour after hour, day after day, week after week. How does that even happen?

Something med school did not cover

Someone's daughter, someone's mother

Holds your hand through plastic now

But the heart of the connection the song finds between soldiers under fire and front-line workers facing a pandemic isn't simply the ceaseless onslaught of horror. It's the utter impossibility of being able to talk about it. It's the complete uselessness of any attempt to describe such an experience to anyone who didn't share it. And it's that ultimate futility that finally brings the true horror home. Some things you just can't speak about. You can barely even sing.

Only 20 minutes to sleep

But you dream of some epiphany

Just one single glimpse of relief

To make some sense of what you've seen

Taylor Swift "epiphany"