I Wish We’d All Been Ready

Zelda had great fun with her apocalyptic post yesterday evening — so much fun, in fact, that she decided to continue the apocalyptic theme of her last post. Zelda has decided to feature a song that was featured in the previously featured Apocalyptic Film of Fashion, A Thief in the Night. Most Fashionable Ladies and Gentlemen: Zelda shall forewarn you. Should you choose to watch the video below, the song in the video will remain in your heads for years after you have heard it. Should you choose to watch the video below, you will be humming and whistling this song for the rest of your entire life. It’s a risk, but it’s worth it. Oh, it’s so, so worth it.

The video below features DC Talk, a now-defunct Christian rap and rock group singing “I Wish We’d All Been Ready.” This song was originally sung by Larry Norman, who was a very popular Christian musician in the 60s and 70s (odd fact: Zelda just discovered that Black Francis happened to be a huge Larry Norman fan, and this fact has given Zelda the courage to admit what awful taste in music she had during her youth — much more detail revealed later in this post), and Larry Norman’s version was the one used in A Thief in the Night.

Enjoy!

Zelda would like you, Most Fashionable Readers, to know that she is not being mean-spirited when she discusses Popular Christian Contemporary Pop Music of Fashion, for she listened to Popular Christian Contemporary Pop Music of Fashion for quite a long time during her youth. She went to the Stephen Curtis Chapman concerts, she purchased Sandi Patty sheet music and played Amy Grant songs for piano recitals, and she nursed an innocent adolescent crush on Michael W. Smith for many years (mostly because, Zelda admits, that aforementioned Michael W. Smith looked remarkably like a pop star of the same era. Zelda is not going to tell you which pop star she is talking about; instead, she is going to let you, Dear Reader, figure it out for yourself by examining a Michael W. Smith album cover from 1990, posted at left).

[By the way, Most Fashionable Reader, Zelda has just received a text from Slash. Slash was very distraught that Zelda was writing a post about music and had not included him. Slash was so distraught that he inserted himself into this post without Zelda’s knowledge. Can you find him, Dear Reader? Can you find him?]

For this evening’s FaOuLiPoWriMoFa (Fashionable Oulipo Writing Month of Fashion) exercise, Zelda has taken the aforementioned song, “I Wish We’d All Been Ready” and created a permutation out of it. A permutation is the “action of changing the order of a set of things lineally arranged,” and it is described most fashionably in the Fashionable Oulipo Compendium of Fashion on page 210. Zelda permutated each line of the song and came up with the poem below.

With guns and war, life was filled,
trampled on the floor, and everyone got

ready. I wish we’d all been.
The days grew cold, children. Died.

Buy a bag of gold; a piece of bread could.
Ready? I wish we’d all been

your mind. There’s no time to change,
and you’ve been left behind. The Son has come

in bed. A man and wife asleep.
Her head? He’s gone. She hears a noise. She turns,

ready. I wish we’d all been
walking up a hill. Two men walking,

left standing. Still, one disappears, and one’s
been ready. I wish we’d all

your mind. There’s no time to change;
come, and you’ve been left behind. The Son has

your mind; there’s no time. To change,
you have been so blind. How could you?

The demons dined. The Father spoke,
left behind. The Son has come and you’ve been

behind. You’ve been left,
left behind. You’ve been.