The Song That Wasn’t a Song - Essay by Greg Luti
Updated: 13 minutes ago
A reflective essay about what endures when everything else fades. In “The Song That Wasn’t a Song,” Greg Luti wonders how future people might remember our laws and buildings, yet overlook the ordinary act of singing “Happy Birthday.”
What the Future Will Remember
I wonder sometimes about the future of the country that I am in, and whether future civilizations and cultures will even care about what mattered once to me. Now, I admit this is not from some random Sunday scroll where deep thought experiments are a topic, but this originates from a video I see that is of the nature of the future. I see someone talk about the future, most likely in a way that the world is doomed, and I then see myself pondering questions of our own world.
After viewing another video about the destruction of my world, I reasoned that the America I live in will most likely be gone one day, for even Rome had to fall, and as much as others in my contemporary world wish to view our modern state as timeless and everlasting, that is not the case. I then wonder what exactly the future would say of us?
My first reaction is of law and architecture. They would copy our laws and our buildings, just as we did with the Romans. Perhaps not word for word, but for the general concept that we were going towards for our way of life. I don’t know if they would like our music. I don’t see anyone really interested in music from ancient times. I skip the deeper meaning that all my musical tastes will be lost to time, and I end the thought experiment, and I go on with my day, for no man should spend too much time with himself thinking, since it eliminates the living.
The Birthday Song
At work today, it was a friend of mine’s birthday, and his girlfriend got him a cake. A few of the workers got together to sing my buddy the most famous song around.
We all stalled before we started, since none of us can sing. We are not on a stage. We are in the middle of the office lobby, where the parents wait to pick up their children. We are all centered facing the cake, which is on the lobby desk, but that is about as much as we do regarding the arrangement. Once we got to the beginning, the words came naturally to us all, and we sang to the thirty-year-old on his birthday.
When we were done singing, someone made a joke about counting to his age, and the room laughed. We then cut the cake, and everyone enjoyed a slice.
What the Song Actually Does
For a brief moment, a song that sounded more like a nursery rhyme united strangers to recognize the significant moment of another person’s life. There was no performance involved or anything or recognition, but we did it to say to him, “We know that time is going by you. It is going by us all. We appreciate that you are here with us as we live.” We can’t turn back the clocks, so when the alarm goes off, we like to show it some love.
What the Future Won’t Understand
When my current culture collapses, and there is nothing left to speak of my world, the future will not remember a moment that may be one of the defining traits of my time: singing happy birthday to someone. They will take inspiration from our laws, and they will see remnants of our buildings and wish to see their own in that very style. But they will never understand how we as a society understood the song was not a song. It was a time to reflect on time itself.
Because no one who sings the song can actually sing, no one performs it with style. Heck, even the very basic lyrics are not profound.
Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to (individual’s name). Happy birthday to you.
That is it. Those are the lyrics that unite people of our time. It is not a song of peace or a massive pop hit, but a little melody about someone’s birthday.
The individual in the song doesn’t get much from the song either. They don’t participate. They only sit there as they have to suffer through bad singers attempting to give a chorus to the repetitive words. Sure, there may be candles at the end of the song the person is supposed to blow out. But that is about as flashy as the ceremony gets.
The Variations, Candles, and Silly Lines
My biggest regret from the lost information is that the future won’t know the funny variations we had of this song, some that are childish and silly and sung by children, not by adults. I remember one from the playground as a kid.
Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. You look like a monkey. And you smell like one too.
Childish nonsense that kids would say to each other, even when it was not their birthday.
The future will miss out on the candles and how there was a certain wish you had to make when you blow them out, and how no one really questioned the nature of the blow. I never once heard someone say, “Hey, wait a minute… how does blowing out fire help with a wish?” We all know the answer when we stand in the room done with the song. It doesn’t. But does that stop anyone from doing it? No. No. It does not.
I am pretty certain that kids know their counterparts do not look like monkeys and do not smell like one either. Did that stop my friends and me from saying the funny line to whoever's birthday it was? No. No. It did not.
What Historians Will Miss
The future will try to analyze our time just as we do of the past. There will be men and women who stand in front of rooms explaining our time to people of their times. “You see this is why they were a democratic republic. They knew a democracy was too much on the people side, and a republic was too much on the law side, so they found a happy medium.” If they are like our historians, they will find a person in our time and find a few fun quotes he said about our time, and then apply them to a lesson.
“The Holy Roman Empire was not holy, nor Roman, nor an empire.” – A guy who didn’t live in the Holy Roman Empire.
Yeah, that is probably going to be what happens after all. Some dude from a few hundred years after my civilization dies will make a note about my time, and then the entire history of my people will be told in that one line.
“America was not a democracy, nor a republic, and Amerigo never actually lived there.” – A guy who did live in America.
After all those lectures, all those speeches and all those misquotes, I can tell you one thing the future won’t talk about: how our society was held together by a simple melody we sang on someone’s birthday. That is something no history book can really replicate.
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