This post is not about Leonbergers. It is a post about me or rather about us, the family who would come to raise our Leonberger Bronco. Oh, how do I wish we could hold the hand inside Bronco. We miss him every day. “I Wanna Hold the Hand Inside You” or “Fade Into You” by Mazzi Star was released September 1993. That was when our first son Jacob was born in Akron, Ohio. At the time I was working on my PhD in Applied Physics and Electrical Engineering / Robotics at Case Western Reserve University, Ohio. The YouTube video below is from October 1994. I was done with my PhD, and I was working for ABB Robotics in Detroit. Our clients were the Detroit car industry. We were preparing for our move to Sweden where our young son would learn to speak English, the adult language, and some Swedish, the children’s language, or so he thought.
To me it seems like times were better back then, but the facts say otherwise. Crime in the US was much worse than it is today, there were more and worse wars, there was more poverty, more children starved, and the Rwandan genocide of Tutsis in 1994 had just finished. 800,000, nearly a million defenseless Tutsis had been intentionally slaughtered in just 100 days. Another thing that had happened that was close to home was that on September 28 1994 a ferry, M/S Estonia, sank in heavy seas as it going from Tallin to Stockholm, killing 852 people, most of them Swedes and Estonians. Only 137 people on board survived. Some of the vicitms worked at the location where I was going. Times were different back then, but they were not better, or were they? Perhaps the time of our youth is better no matter the state of the world.
This song reminds me of the word poignant. I like to use that word. As I understand it means sad, but beautiful and meaningful. The lyrics are poignant, but you don’t really use that word for music, but if you could, I think it would apply to the music as well.
The lyrics for “Fade Into”
I wanna hold the hand inside you
I wanna take the breath that’s true
I look to you and I see nothing
I look to you to see the truth
You live your life, you go in shadows
You’ll come apart and you’ll go blind
Some kind of night into your darkness
Colors your eyes with what’s not there
[Chorus]
Fade into you
Strange you never knew
Fade into you
I think it’s strange you never knew
[Verse 2]
A stranger light comes on slowly
A stranger’s heart without a home
You put your hands into your head
And then its smiles cover your heart
[Chorus]
Fade into you
Strange you never knew
Fade into you
I think it’s strange you never knew
Fade into you
Strange you never knew
Fade into you
I think it’s strange you never knew
You who are old enough to remember 1993 and 1994, do you think times were better back then?
Do you remember this song?
Leonberger Life 