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2001: Icarus IIIIn an interview shortly after the release of the Kansas album Somewhere to Elsewhere, Phil Ehart commented that he had told Kerry Livgren that since the original "Icarus" was about mythology and "Icarus II" was about World War II, "Icarus III" would have to be about space...--------------------------------------------------- ICARUS III: To Touch the Face of God
In 1940 John Gillespie Magee, Jr., was one of hundreds of Americans who slipped into Canada to join the Royal Canadian Air Force and to volunteer to fight for Britain against Hitler's war machine. Although such volunteering was technically against federal law in the years before the United States formally joined the war, the government silently approved of the actions of Magee and other such young Americans. Within a year of his enlisting, Magee was sent to England as a fighter pilot and was assigned to the RCAF No. 412 Fighter Sqaudron, where he rose to the rank of Pilot Officer, flying fighter sweeps and air defense missions over France and Britain. In September 1941 Magee was assigned to test a newer model of the Spitfire V. During one high-altitude test flight six miles high he found that a poem had begun composing itself in his mind, a verse celebrating the joy and freedom of flying high between the earth and the sky, between the sun and the clouds, and musing upon a quiet, sacred place in the outer reaches of the atmosphere, far above the mortal world below, where one might in solitude commune with the Eternal. After he landed, he sent a short note to his parents about his experience and included the text of his poem on the back of the letter. His sudden inspiration may have been a premonition of his own destiny: a mere three months later, John Magee was killed in an air collision over Tangmere, England. He was nineteen years old. In the decades since, Magee's "High
Flight" has become one of the most famous and beloved poems in the history
of aviation. Its expression of joyful, breathless exuberance yielding
to sublime meditation, strikingly untouched by the bitter, world-wide struggle
swirling around its youthful composer, has proven singularly inspiring
to generations of pilots the world over both in times of war and in times
of peace... as well as singularly prophetic in a way in which the young
Magee could never have imagined...
Oh, I have slipped the surly bonds of earth
The high, untrespassed
sanctity of space...
"...Engines throttling up; three engines now at a hundred-and-four percent." "Challenger, go at throttle up." "Roger; go at throttle up... uh-oh--" "One minute fifteen seconds.
Velocity twenty-nine hundred feet per second. Altitude nine nautical
miles. Downrange distance seven nautical miles...
...I have slipped the surly bonds of earth...
"...Flight controllers here are looking
very carefully at the situation; obviously a major malfunction...
We have no downlink..."
...and touched the face of God.
Early in the morning sunlight
Higher than the birds I'm flying
Sail on, sail on
Floating on a cloud of amber
I'm going home...
"...The crew of the space shuttle Challenger honored us by the manner in which they lived their lives. We will never forget them, nor the last time we saw them, this morning, as they prepared for their journey and waved goodbye and 'slipped the surly bonds of earth' to 'touch the face of God.'" President Ronald Reagan
--------------------------------------------------- Today marks the fifteenth anniversary of the Challenger space shuttle disaster. Over the past several years I have made it a personal crusade to honor the memory of the crew's sacrifice and to preserve that memory in a day and time when heroes seem to be few and far between, a time when our eyes, ears, hearts and minds are bombarded from all directions by such a multitude of conflicting and discordant voices and messages on TV, radio and the Internet that the very notion of our coming together as one people with one thought and for one reason seems an impossible idea. But there was one such day when this very thing happened, a day when differences of politics, religion, gender, race and nationality vanished into insignificance: January 28th, 1986. In memory of that day and in honor of the lives that were lost and of the lives that were forever changed, I have developed a new web site, "The Day the Earth Stood Still," featuring the complete video of the final flight of the Challenger, at http://www.datamanos2.com/challenger/the_day.html. This page also provides a link to the DivX codec that is necessary to view the video. Some might question the propriety
or even the necessity of remembering such a sad day in our nation's history.
I am convinced, however, that the remembrance of our past is the key to
embracing our future. This is why I honor the memory of the Challenger
7; this is why I believe that the song "Icarus - Borne on Wings of Steel"
is ultimately a hero's canticle; this is why I believe that, as long as
we remember, their mission will indeed continue.
(The brief story of John Gillespie Magee, Jr., at the beginning of this posting is an abridgement of a short retelling of his life by Dave English and which is located at http://www.skygod.com/quotes/file18.html.)
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