Sarfraz Manzoor

I am a huge, huge fan of Emmylou Harris. She epitomises everything that I admire in how to live life and what I want from music. She is not young but is, for my money, a thousand times sexier than any of her botoxed and cosmetically adjusted contemporaries. Her voice is spine chillingly beautiful and she is just effortlessly cool. Anyway, if you have never heard any Emmylou Harris songs here are the lyrics to Boulder to Birmingham written after the death of her husband Gram Parsons. You need to listen to the actual song just to appreciate just how heart stoppingly moving it is- but the lyrics are amazing on their own.

Boulder to Birmingham
I don’t want to hear a love song
I got on this airplane just to fly
And I know there’s life below
But all that it can show me
Is the prairie and the sky
And I don’t want to hear a sad story
Full of heartbreak and desire
The last time I felt like this
It was in the wilderness and the canyon was on fire
And I stood on the mountain in the night and I watched it burn
I watched it burn, I watched it burn.
I would rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham
I would hold my life in his saving grace.
I would walk all the way from Boulder to Birmingham
If I thought I could see, I could see your face.
Well you really got me this time
And the hardest part is knowing I’ll survive.
I have come to listen for the sound
Of the trucks as they move down
Out on ninety five
And pretend that it’s the ocean coming down to wash me clean, to wash me clean
Baby do you know what I mean
I would rock my soul in the bosom of Abraham
I would hold my life in his saving grace.
I would walk all the way from Boulder to Birmingham
If I thought I could see, I could see your face.