“Waiting for Superman” (2013) Daughtry

She’s watching the taxi driver, he pulls away
She’s been locked up inside her apartment a hundred days
She says, “Yeah, he’s still coming, just a little bit late
He got stuck at the laundry mat washing his cape”
She’s just watching the clouds roll by
and they spell her name
like Lois Lane
And she smiles, oh the way she smiles

She’s talking to angels, counting the stars
Making a wish on a passing car
She’s dancing with strangers, falling apart
Waiting for Superman to pick her up
In his arms, In his arms
Waiting for Superman

She’s out on the corner trying to catch a glimpse
Nothing’s making sense
She’s been chasing an answer
A sign lost in the abyss, this Metropolis
She says...“Yeah, he’s still coming, just a little bit late
He got stuck at the Five and Dime saving the day”
She says... “If life was a movie, then it wouldn’t end like this
Left without a kiss”
Still, she smiles
The way she smiles, yeah

She’s talking to angels, she’s counting the stars
Making a wish on a passing car
She’s dancing with strangers, she’s falling apart
Waiting for Superman to pick her up
In his arms, In his arms
She’s waiting for Superman

To lift her up and take her anywhere
Show her love
And climbing through the air
Save her now before it’s too late tonight
Oh, like a speeding light
And she smiles

She’s talking to angels, she’s counting the stars
Making a wish on a passing car
She’s dancing with strangers, she’s falling apart
Waiting for Superman to pick her up
In his arms, In his arms
She’s waiting for Superman

To lift her up and take her anywhere
Show her love and climbing through the air
Save her now before it’s too late tonight
She’s waiting for Superman

I’m skipping ahead in my alphabetical list of songs (that I started in September 2012 and still need to finish) because I have a new song to add to my list of all-time favorites, and I want to share it with you. It’s called Waiting for Superman, by one of my favorite groups, Daughtry. (That link will take you to the video.)

Like all the songs I’ve written about for this series, there are several things that stood out to me; first of all, I love Superman. He’s my favorite superhero. I won’t get into why (I wrote another post about it called My Hero! that you can read here), but he is. And I have superpowers. So there’s that.

Also, I love Daughtry. And. The music is pretty awesome. But most significantly, this song makes me think of myself. And God.

Bet you didn’t see that one coming! I didn’t either. At first I liked it because it was about Superman and it didn’t suck. But the more times I listened to it – really listened to the lyrics – the more clear it became:  I’ve been waiting for Superman. And you know what? The irony of it is that God is my real superhero. He always has been, and always will be. Whenever I need (and I mean actually need, not want but think I need) anything He is right there to provide it.

In the song he says, “She’s talking to angels/counting the stars/making a wish on a passing car/She’s dancing with strangers/she’s falling apart” – all of those things are considered “crazy” by society’s standards. This is a girl on the edge, waiting for a superhero to come pick her up and carry her away. How many people do we know who are in the same situation? They may not be as obviously lost as someone who dances with strangers, but how many of your friends, coworkers, family members, neighbors are waiting for someone to rescue them? An even more terrifying thought – how many of them don’t even know they’re lost?

Just something to think about as this new year begins. I’ll probably be coming back to this song a time or two, but one thought at a time for now. Blessings!

Rewind

I've been doing a lot of creating recently, trying to get my insides out so I can work through them and move forward. I spent about a week going back through the cards from the first nineteen weeks of the art challenge and made new pages in my new journal, and I would like to share them. As I always say, the best place to start is at the beginning.

This is it, the prompt that started it all. My original page was a background of alternating blue and red squares. I remember wanting to follow the prompts as literally as possible. Not a surprise, but also not really in the spirit of the project, so this time around I exercised some of my creative license and came up with something different:

I painted the page with light blue to start. I then took a piece of transparency that was left over from a Superman iron-on, and laid it on the page. Using a stencil I bought at Paper Pals and a paint dabber, I created the hexagons around the outside of it. A hexagon is itself symmetrical, even though the way I placed them isn't, and I like how it turned out.

For the second prompt, I made my own version of the Superman logo - with an A for my autistic superpowers - and practiced drawing zentangles inside of it. The original drawings were black on white, and I used a blue pen to color it in. I don't know if I want to add more before I journal so I haven't covered the page with medium yet.

So, a sort of product review:  there are a few things about this new journal that are new experiences for me. It's designed to be used landscape style, for one, each page measuring about 8.5" high and about 11.75" long. It's also the first time I've been able to create in a book that is already bound. In the past I've found myself feeling blocked and getting frustrated easily unless working on loose pages. Overall though I'm really enjoying it! And there are enough pages for me to do one a week for the whole year, plus about four extra. All that's left to figure out is how I'm going to add to the layers I create by the prompt decks.

My Hero!

Spiderman is lame. He got bitten by a spider and suddenly thought he could save the world? Not so much. I agree with Uncle Ben when he said “With great power comes great responsibility,” but I don’t see Spiderman as a REAL superhero. But he’s not just a “hero” either, because he had superpowers.

No, Superman is my favorite superhero. He was born with his superpowers, although they didn’t become super or powers until he landed on Earth as an infant....But. If you’re going to have true superpowers, they have to be something you’re born with. Plus he could fly. And breathe in space. Also, Batman is my favorite hero. He didn’t have superpowers, yet he was able to do all kinds of crazy things, and he drove a sweet car, and his office was in a cave. Enough said.

I’ll save Batman for another day. Today we’re going to Broadway, the Alvin Theater to be precise, on this date in 1966. The closing day of the (admittedly kind of lame) musical “It’s A Bird…It’s A Plane…It’s Superman.” It ran for just under four months, with 129 performances. There have been a few off-Broadway performances since, including this mini musical put on by some students at San Mateo High School in 2005 (it’s really pretty funny):

The Dallas Theater Center also did a version of the musical for about five weeks in the summer of 2010, with Matt Cavenaugh playing the dual role of Superman/Clark Kent. I looked him up on Google, he’s pretty cute. Although not quite as cute as Cheyenne Jackson (yes that’s a man) who played the same role in May 2007.

It’s been said that all good things must come to an end; well, thanks to Kaptain Obvious, we know the same is true for all bad things. Having never seen it myself, I can’t say this for sure, but I have a feeling there’s a good reason audiences failed to support this musical’s run on Broadway. Just saying.

In conclusion, I would like to re-emphasize my support of Superman for greatest ever Superhero by sharing a photo of a very special friend (and true hero) of mine: