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Pete Townshend Dedicates Song To Tragedies' Victims

'Flying Boy,' posted on Web site, written in 1990 for Who guitarist's son.

Pete Townshend of the Who has posted the lyrics of a previously unreleased song in the "Pete's Diaries" section of his Web site (www.petetownshend.com) in reaction to the September 11 terrorist attacks on New York and Washington, D.C.

The song, "Flying Boy," was written in 1990 for his then-one-year-old son, Joseph. It reminded Townshend of the freedom and exultation of taking flight. "He's a flying boy," he sings. "He can fly through the sky yes he can."

"We will always fly. No one can hurt us. No one can stop us," he wrote by way of introduction to the song. "No one can break our spirit. Even though we will now fear flying more than ever before, we will never stop flying. For we were born to fly into life, not to fly into death."

The song's lyrics were written one day when Townshend was holding up his son and pretending to fly him around the room like a plane.

"It may well be these moments when our parents whirl us around that we all later dream about," he wrote. "For when you are a baby being 'flown' around and around, maybe at that instant you really think you can fly. Well, I believe that when you are a little kid, you can."

In a separate note posted the day after the attacks, Townshend expressed his profound sorrow and compassion for the city of New York.

"Here in the U.K., I pray for every one of you there," he wrote. "I have always loved New York so much. Its energy has always felt to me to be as much about love and ozone-positive fresh air as money and commercial dynamism. Whatever was intended in these acts of terrorism, they have created only more energy and more love."

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