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“She may forget him.  He will remember her.”

I remember the torrential rain in Bacolod City.  I remember Ana, dancing in the rain.

"My name is Ana" doesn't so much tell a story as attempt to capture a moment - or a few moments - of joy in the life of a child, witnessed by chance by a passing stranger.  At the end of May 2004 as I walked in the northern part of Bacolod City, I was caught in a torrential downpouring of rain lasting more than half an hour.  As I approached my hotel, soaked through & bedraggled, I came across the spectacle described in the first verse of this song, a powerful image of the innocence lost to so many of us.   My late online friend Cleo (xETTa) remarked that she wished that she herself was the girl in the song.

Behind the hotel, in a muddy side road is a row of frail embarrassed shacks

- held up by rope & fervent prayers.  For all her 10 years she's lived here.

Rain drumming down on & through the rusty corrugated iron rooves -

Swift rivulets are guided into stripe-like gushing cascades down upon the land.

& she goes, laughing with her baby brother,

& she throws her ragged clothes aside.

 & she goes, laughing with her baby brother,

& she throws her ragged clothes aside & they splash through the puddles.

Dancing, naked in the rain.

Dancing, naked in the rain.

Dancing.  The rain will be gone tomorrow.

Dancing.  This chance may not come again for some time. 

Dancing, naked in the rain.

Dancing, naked in the rain.

Dancing.  This chance may not come again.

Dancing.  Come on - let's go dance in the rain - just for today.

Just for today.

Who knows what tomorrow will bring or take away?

"My name is Ana" she answers the foreign stranger.

"I don't want to speak English" she explains.

The sky has been wrung out, her clothes been dried by another sun-baked day.

She proffers polite excuses then bows down to familiar household chores.

He climbs the stairs to his hotel room.

She may forget him.

He will remember her. 

& she knows what is good & what is not.

& she grows on the edge of Bacolod City.

& she knows her place in this world.

As she grows will she recall her happy childhood days of dancing?

Composer:
Ed Hooke

Date of
Composition/ Copyright:
 January 2007

Date of Recording:    January 2007