Heres to Heroes

by way of stereo making minimal contact …

“Here Comes the Rain Again,” Eurythmics
“Here Comes the Sun,” The Beatles
“Here Comes Your Man,” The Pixies
“Here I Am,” Daniel Amos
“Here I Am,” Lyle Lovett
“Here’s Where the Story Ends,” The Sundays
“Heretics,” Andrew Bird
“Hero,” Steve Taylor
“Hero in Me,” Jeffrey Gaines
“Heroes,” David Bowie

That Steve Taylor tune is his version of Surprised by Joy, his testimony of what C.S. Lewis called sehnsucht — “an unsatisfied desire which is itself more desirable than any other satisfaction.” Roger Waters may have described it better than either of them: “When I was a child I caught a fleeting glimpse / Out of the corner of my eye. / I turned to look and it was gone …”

Lewis encountered such a fleeting glimpse in “the unrhymed translation of Tegner’s Drapa … ‘I heard a voice that cried, Balder the beautiful / Is dead, is dead.'” Steve Taylor encountered the same thing in the words, “Avengers assemble!” Not quite a glimpse of the transcendant, perhaps, but just enough to suggest that something transcendant is or should be possible. (I’m not describing this well, but the fanboy who put together that montage of clips from Heroes to Taylor’s song knows exactly what I’m getting at, and I think maybe Bowie does too.)