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I was bruised and battered, I couldn't tell what I felt.
I was unrecognizable to myself.
Saw my reflection in a window and didn't know my own face.
Oh brother are you gonna leave me wastin' away
On the streets of Philadelphia.
I walked the avenue, 'til my legs felt like stone,
I heard the voices of friends, vanished and gone,
At night I could hear the blood in my veins,
It was just as black and whispering as the rain,
On the streets of Philadelphia.
Ain't no angel gonna greet me.
It's just you and I my friend.
And my clothes don't fit me no more,
A thousand miles
Just to slip this skin.
Night has fallen, I'm lyin' awake,
I can feel myself fading away,
So receive me brother with your faithless kiss,
Or will we leave each other alone like this
On the streets of Philadelphia.
I was unrecognizable to myself.
Saw my reflection in a window and didn't know my own face.
Oh brother are you gonna leave me wastin' away
On the streets of Philadelphia.
I walked the avenue, 'til my legs felt like stone,
I heard the voices of friends, vanished and gone,
At night I could hear the blood in my veins,
It was just as black and whispering as the rain,
On the streets of Philadelphia.
Ain't no angel gonna greet me.
It's just you and I my friend.
And my clothes don't fit me no more,
A thousand miles
Just to slip this skin.
Night has fallen, I'm lyin' awake,
I can feel myself fading away,
So receive me brother with your faithless kiss,
Or will we leave each other alone like this
On the streets of Philadelphia.
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But even if you weren't there, you don't have to do a lot of deep thinking to understand the meaning of this song. The lyrics are perhaps too literal for comfort. We would start losing weight uncontrollably, losing maybe a few pounds, maybe more, every week. Literally "wasting away". It's not surprising that pretty soon we were "unrecognizable to [ourselves]" and our "clothes don't fit me no more". I was down to 112 pounds when the first treatment came out. I literally looked like I had been in a concentration camp.
Every week the paper would come out, and the weekly obituaries. Up to twelve pages in the Washington Blade in a single week. Every week, another friend got sick. Every week, another friend died. Every weekend was spent going to funerals and visiting hospitals. Our friends were literally "vanished and gone".
And indeed there was "no angel gonna greet me". Our churches threw us out. They were afraid to touch us, afraid to share a meal, for fear they would catch it. It was "just you and I my friend".
The movie Philadelphia was the first mainstream film to deal with the issue of AIDS. It even showed a bit of what Kaposi's Sarcoma looks like, although the filmmakers had to water it down a lot to get the film made. If they showed the true horror of AIDS, nobody would pay to see it. But this song captures the pain, the loss, and the loneliness that was AIDS for those of us who lived through it.
Follow this link to see an award winning photograph of Ken Meeks, a real victim of the plague, with Kaposi's Sarcoma. My partner had it in the 1980s. He had it on his skin, and also on his organs -- his kidneys, liver, and intestines. Kaposi's is a terribly painful way to die. He couldn't face his fate, and he killed himself.
nytimes.com/2011/05/31/health/…
As far as I am aware, Bruce Springsteen wrote them.
It was written back in the early 1990s when AIDS was relatively new to the world. At that time there was a lot of fear about how the disease could be spread and so much heartless discrimination against gay people who had the disease.
Bruce wrote this song for the film "Philadelphia' which was based on the true story of a lawyer who sued his law firm for dismissing him because he had AIDS. It was one of the first films to deal with AIDS discrimination and homophobia.
I remember at the time how sad it was that people who were dying of this terrible disease were also having to deal with the incredible cold-heartedness of a society that feared and banished them when they were at their most vulnerable.
I think Bruce's words are very moving and perfectly highlight how the discrimination was a heartbreaking reaction to a tragic disease:
"Oh brother, are you gonna leave me wastin' away"
It would be great to know if the director had told Springstein if the main character in the film was actually suffering from AIDS as a result of being homosexual, as opposed to a heroin addict as upon listening to the song I get the feel of someone who really is a down and out drug addict as opposed to the character played by Tom Hanks in the film.
"I was bruised and battered
I couldn't tell what I felt "
these are the feelings of a depressed person
" i walked a thousand miles just to slip this skin ". He is starving and waiting to die. He wants to put an end to his suffering as soon as possible...
"Ain't no angel gonna greet me
It's just you and I my friend"
When his soul will leave the body, no angel will greet him, because he took his life... HE decided to leave... and supposedly God doesn't want us to decide when we leave...
"I heard voices of friend vanished and gone "
He has lost all his friends....because they were all "fair-weather friends". Ironically Philadelphia means "brotherly love"