Hey Charlie

‘Hey, Charlie’ was a song T wrote in 2018 in preparation for AIDS 2018 and inspired by the true and full reconciliation he and the professor who infected him with HIV obtained a year and a half earlier. T’s professor passed away a few months later.  T wrote it from a five or six-year-old Dreamer and Chuck’s (the name of the character representing the professor in the ‘Dreamer’ series) perspective.

It is a message that, if Dreamer and Charlie as children and adults can find a way to reconcile and become best of friends (of which T and the professor eventually became), perhaps the rest of the world can also achieve restorative justice.

LYRICS

Hey Charlie, let’s go play
Gonna be Aistieada (Arabic for ‘restoration’) today

With our brothers with our friends
We will make great amends

There was danger there was sorrow
Nothing we couldn’t make up tomorrow
Now we’re just, best of friends
Why can’t the world just shake hands?

Hey Charlie, let’s go play
Gonna be Aistieada (restoration) today

With our brothers with our friends
We will make great amends

Being loving is really cool
Though some may think that we’re just fools

If we’re gonna live in Ljubav (former Yugoslavian languages for ‘love’)
We better get to being Love

Hey Charlie, let’s go play
Gonna be Aistieada (restoration) today

With our brothers with our friends
We will make great amends

Heaven sent must be this nalgun (Icelandic for ‘rapprochement’)
Now that we have left our pride
If we didn’t try, thu, (Vietnamese for ‘try’) chesta, (Bangle for ‘try’)
We would still be living that lie

Seems so simple now in our minds
How one can be free of das Hirn (German for ‘the mind’)
‘Course we had to go through der Sturm (German for ‘the storm’)
For our bond to be reborn