99 Luftballons—Nena

#365Songs: May 23rd

You and I in a little toy shop
Buy a bag of balloons with the money we’ve got
Set them free at the break of dawn
’Til one by one they were gone
Back at base bugs in the software
Flash the message: “something’s out there!”
Floating in the summer sky
Ninety-nine red balloons go by

I was pretty young in 1984. Certainly too young to understand geopolitics, too innocent to comprehend Reagan’s culture wars and the catastrophic impact he’d leave on our lives for decades to come. I remember his old wrinkled face, that rehearsed voice interrupting television shows and sporting events, but tuned out his terrible fear-mongering words.

I didn’t realize until much later — in college, as I devoured Don DeLillo novels about Cold War America — that the world awaited disaster continuously for years. Angry, old, powerful white males flexing, challenging one another to end the world. This is also when I learned about Reagan’s war on Black culture, on Women’s rights, on the mentally ill, the way he perpetuated a myth that greed is good, that power and money trickle down when the privileged are free to do as they please.

I do remember Nena’s 99 Luftballons. We even had the record, the only song that mattered, the only song I recall ever hearing from the West Berlin-based band. Toy stores! Balloons! Summer! The vintage 80’s beat, so catchy, so fun, a song played at dances. We celebrated, hummed, and sang the song without for a moment understanding what the lyrics warned about.

What I know now that I didn’t know then is that 99 Luftballons might just be the strongest anti-war protest song of the past 40 years.

Ninety-nine red balloons
Floating in the summer sky
Panic bells, it’s red alert
There’s something here from somewhere else
The war machine springs to life
Opens up one eager eye
Focusing it on the sky
Where ninety-nine red balloons go by

Times weren’t good in West Berlin, 1984. Germany was a country split in two, Berlin a city divided, the post-Nazi Soviet border wall keeping kids away from kids, cultures from cultures, a clash none of them wanted but everyone inherited. I can imagine tying notes to balloon strings, hoping it’ll land on the other side of the wall in the hands of a kid I’d never meet, or flinging a paper airplane with a scribbled hello soaring into a foreign land ten feet away. This is what kids do, have always done. But nothing is innocent when everything is tense.

Ninety-nine Decision Street
Ninety-nine ministers meet
To worry, worry, super scurry
Call the troops out in a hurry
This is what we’ve waited for
This is it, boys, this is war
The president is on the line
As ninety-nine red balloons go by

Paranoia. Fidgety fingers ready to trigger the end of the world. Over red balloons, mistaken for bombs. It’d be absurd if it weren’t so realistic.

As kids back then, we had limited access to information. The evening news was a reminder to take a bath, do homework, and get ready for bed. Phones were for conversations, gossip, pranks — mostly harmless pieces of plastic with limited possibilities. Innocence was inevitable for a white-bred suburban-ish kid.

It’s been 40 years since 99 Luftballons was released, and here we are: a new round of angry, old, powerful (mostly) white males flexing, challenging one another to end the world. Though it’s still possible that a few harmless kids could trigger nuclear warfare with balloons mistaken for bombs, it’s less possible for those same kids to share the innocence we had back then. All they know now is chaos, fear, anxiety with access to too much information, too much stimuli, too much too much too much of everything.

Ninety-nine Decision Street
Ninety-nine ministers meet
To worry, worry, super scurry
Call the troops out in a hurry
This is what we’ve waited for
This is it, boys, this is war
The president is on the line
As ninety-nine red balloons go by

I’m not one of those old guys who believe the way it was is the way it should always be. Those days where fucked, when I was a kid, with parents hiding the realities of the world from a generation who were later ill-prepared for when it all fell apart. Too young for the Cold War, those of us who came of age in the ’90s experienced relative peace. The vast majority of us didn’t have internet access, and therefore the distance from one side of the world to the other was only as far as a bike could go. 9/11 was our first trauma, and nothing’s been the same since. But at least we have context for a world that isn’t always on edge.

Ninety-nine knights of the air
Ride super high-tech jet fighters
Everyone’s a Super Hero
Everyone’s a Captain Kirk
With orders to identify
To clarify and classify
Scramble in the summer sky
Ninety-nine red balloons go by

Today, chaos is all around, everywhere, at all times. We’re back to building border walls, demonizing queer and at-risk communities, banning books, repealing basic human rights, acting as if the wealthiest amongst us gives two shits about anyone other than themselves. We stand by as the biggest sinners with the most power make the laws while jerking off to the Bible.

My kid is 13. His childhood has been shut down, online, on fire, at war, insurrect-ed, under protest, a chaotic backdrop at odds with any possibility for innocence — an anxious, confused generation slow to develop socially and academically. And yet, they’re stronger, wiser, more prepared for whatever comes next — even an overreaction to the most innocent of gestures. Perhaps one day, when they’re in power, a red balloon will be nothing more than a red balloon.

Ninety-nine dreams I have had
In every one a red balloon
It’s all over and I’m standing pretty
In this dust that was a city
If I could find a souvenir
Just to prove the world was here
And here is a red balloon
I think of you, and let it go

~

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