August 2000

The music is barely audible over the din of the cheering crowd. The bar is packed, and the spirit is one of celebration. This is Vietnam shortly after the war, and in the festivities there is amnesty - a necessary part of the healing. I feel the elation of the crowd around me, but also my own nostalgia. This is, of course, not my time. This is a time from the past, back when I was too young to know what was going on. Yet I'm here as the crowd pushes closer to the stage in anticipation of the next act. It's karaoke night, and beyond the pale neon a nondescript Asian man steps from behind the curtain. The song that blares from the satellite speakers is old and familiar - Elton John's "Rocket Man." The man before us seems to miss his cue, and sits motionlessly in a chair at center stage, his back to the crowd. But there is some cultural significance to the song - something about the concept of a rocket man - that I'm only now starting to understand. This song has become a kind of post war anthem to the Vietnamese, a formerly simple people who have looked beyond irony of their adopted theme and somehow found hope. This realization makes me wistful. But I don't have time for introspection, as I'm shoved forward with the crowd. The performer has risen from his chair, and as Elton John reaches the crucial phrase, the man turns his head to look over his right shoulder with a well-practiced grace, and with a sly smile mouths the words, right on cue, "I'm a rocket man..." The electronic strings swell, and the cheers are deafening, and I'm swept up in the moment.

This all presupposes that "Rocket Man" is a song about the future and change and how we deal with it, though I'm not sure that's the case.