FLIGHT 3407
CD will raise funds for Flight 3407 memorial
After the plane crashed and killed 50 people about two miles from Noa Bursie’s house in Clarence, she went online to write down her thoughts and to sort through her feelings.
Without realizing it, she started a song.
The singer/songwriter began by posting a note to a group of friends on the social networking site Facebook two days after the crash.
“Let’s honor their memory with solemnity and reverence . . . and watch the sun set and wait for spring and help our kids do homework . . . and book our next flight . . . and live each day like we mean it . . .” she wrote.
Her friend, writer Christina Abt, among others, wrote back. The correspondence that followed was the beginning of a song — a “sonic hug” — that Bursie and Abt wrote together.
Now Bursie and Abt, along with local singers and musicians, have recorded the song, called “Love Knows No Boundaries.”
Bursie and Abt plan to sell the CD to raise money to help Clarence create a memorial to Flight 3407. The song will be performed and the CDs will be on sale at 7 p. m. Thursday at Eastern Hills Wesleyan Church, 8445 Greiner Road. The CDs have yet to be priced.
A clip featuring the song is posted on YouTube and loveknowsnoboundaries. org. The group sings, “[Love] lives on and embraces/Ascends to the stars/It speaks words of comfort/ A prayer or a sigh/Of this we are certain—love never dies . . .”
The lyrics, said Bursie, reflect her original message to her friends.
“You have to breathe. Life goes on,” she said. “You have to honor life by not stopping.”
It upset Bursie to think about how people died that night in February. The world literature teacher at City Honors High School in Buffalo wrote on Facebook, asking why those 50 people lost their lives. She wrote about her own mortality and how too much of her time seemed to be spent doing selfish things. She ended by letting her friends know how much they meant to her: “I am grateful and blessed to have met you and have you in my life. — n.”
That night, Abt wrote back: “I had some similar ideas and I would like to share this poem with you,” Bursie remembered.
After the lyrics were finished, Bursie said, the melody came easily. It seemed to appear out of nowhere.
“We were just there to give birth to it, Christina and I,” she said.
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