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Voyage

 
Did you ever notice how an artistic explanation can sometimes be superior to any scientific or philosophical one, and therefore more enjoyable and fun? This week ABBA published a new album named Voyage, after a forty years long sabbatical, during which me and the rest of the world who admires them could only pray to God for this to happen. 
Although all songs are brilliant, to me Bumblebee stands out for the ecological theme of its lyrics, expressing anxiety about the possibility that humans can cause the extinction of this insect species. I will spare my words by not trying to describe the magic of their music, suffice it to say they are the reason why I love music, and that I will never forget the moment I first heard Super Trouper, forty years ago, played on a brand new stereo device my parents bought so that their children could learn to love music and better socialize through that. The transformation which that beautiful song sung by beautiful ladies produced in me was so huge and inexplicable, so that I started to love life from that moment on.
I will focus on the magic of their texts. I cannot overstate how meaningful is poetry of each and every song on the new album, telling its story clearly and precisely. Every verse of Bumblebee resonates with me, from the pure joy of spending time in a garden, to the worry that future generations might be deprived of it, and it reminds me of another their song, Move On, that has somewhat different thematic. The similarity is the wonder of nature and the wonder of life, but the latter one also asks these interesting questions: “What really makes the difference between all dead and living things, the will to stay alive?“ and “But how can I explain the wonder of the moment, to be alive, to feel the sun that follows every rain?”
Altough this actually just rephrases the question asked by people for millennia, it does this in such an ellegant and unpretentious way, that one can ignore that fact, especially when science is still struggling to give a more concrete answer to these questions than any song is supposed to give. It is the only song I have ever dreamt about that I am listening to it in my dream, at least that I can recall, I felt wonderful in the dream because that music is so great, and after that I woke up with a strong bittersweet feeling of nostalgia for my youth, that irreversibly passed by, as well as the era of making such music delights. Fortunately, ABBA is back, and at least for a moment brought me back to my youth. 

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