John Roderick wrote the above line and repeats it seven times(!) in his song, “The Commander Thinks Aloud”— about the Space Shuttle Columbia Disaster that happened February 1, 2003

and, if I’m not careful, I will start to cry during the first verse

The Commander Thinks Aloud

Boys and girls in cars
Dogs and birds on lawns
From here I can touch the sun


Put your jackets on
I feel we're being born
The Tropic of Capricorn is below


We stall above the pole
Still your face is young
As we feel our weight return


A trail of shooting stars
The horses call the storm
Because the air contains the Charge


The radio is on
And Houston knows the score
Can you feel it, we're almost home

The crew compartment's breaking up
The crew compartment's breaking up
The crew compartment's breaking up
The crew compartment's breaking up
(This is all I wanted to bring home)

The crew compartment's breaking up
(This is all I wanted to bring home)

The crew compartment's breaking up
(This is all I wanted to bring home)

The crew compartment's breaking up
This is all I wanted to bring home to you

Songwriter: John Roderick, The Long Winters


The Commander Thinks Aloud lyrics © Kobalt Music Publishing Ltd., Rough Trade Publishing

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this song — since the very first time i (belatedly) heard and learned about it on the Song Exploder podcast in 2016 — became an instant melancholic metaphor-lamentation for me, even while retaining it’s very visceral and intended meaning —

at first, for the climate chaos we face on our communal spaceship — Spaceship Earth,

as in, “hey, do you realize we’re floating in space?” — then, why are we [deliberately] destroying the crew compartment?

and

for our lives — for the simplicity that is both stolen and lost

in the daily struggle — of and against exploitation, repression and oppression; in the daily drama of our dis/mis/mal contentment; in the daily, unnecessary grasping, striving, amassing and hoarding — whether for – or of, wealth, land, power, influence, reputation, career, fame, control or privilege —

or, in orbiting the Earth in a shuttle or space station or landing on the Moon in a spacecraft — when we could’ve just been human beings caretaking of this Eden and of each other.

and personally,

for our strong, resilient and simultaneously fragile individual vehicles — our pods and rovers — our crew compartments — as we encounter life-altering or terminal illness or when we finally begin to fathom or succumb to the frailty and terminality of our human bodies and lives /

the song reminded me of the man who raised me and his arresting prognosis following a terminal, somewhat manageable diagnosis and then his quiet, rapid plummet out of life — and out of our lives;

then, this summer, the song made me think of my oldest and dearest friend — of her longtime and chronic illnesses and how her precious body is literally spinning out sideways in an other, completely unexpected and uncontrollable metastatic direction;

currently, it has me thinking of my newest and dearest friend — a person whose freedom to pilot and crew her own life and body was stolen from her for decades, and just as she finally realizes a measure — albeit a profanely meager measure — of stability, control and autonomy, she learned that her personal rover is likely failing after years of being controlled and failed by the system and by mission support.

and, if I’m not careful, I will start to cry and never stop

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“And the thing was, you sing it once, the second time everybody gets it, the third time they've heard it now, the fourth time they're like, “Okay, alright.” Fifth, sixth time it starts to get annoying. And then, a new kind of gravity enters the seventh time, you start to feel the emotion. And when I perform it live, if I'm not careful, I will start to cry during that part.”

- John Roderick, on the Song Exploder podcast

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