"'This Year's Love'"

I wish that I possessed a knowledgeable vocabulary or deeper understand of music such that I could talk about it in an intellectual way as opposed to simply saying  ‘I really like that song.’ I’ve always been an avid music fan, and if it had been possible for me to memorize chemical or algebraic equations the way I have managed to remember song lyrics over the years, I would be a freakin’ genius.

Seriously. It would be amazing if there were a way to look at my brain memory the same way I can pull up the pie diagrams that display the way my computer memory is allotted among various programs. I would love to know how much of my grey matter contains song lyrics compared with, say, geometry. I imagine the results would be sadly astounding.

We all have favorite songs that become part of our life sound tracks. Songs that, regardless of how much time has passed or how much we might grow and evolve, we will always love. Music, I believe, becomes ingrained in our sensory memories – they become part of us and who we are. There are pieces of music I love because of the lyrics and because of the instrumental sounds. I love voices, especially those with that earthy, scratchy, gravely kind of tone.

People who know me would tell you that I love Dave Matthews. He would be an example of the many ways I love music. There is something about the quality of his voice that resonates with me. Add to this the lyrics – the longing of his love songs – the multitude of instruments like flute, saxophone, violin (or fiddle?), guitar, drums … it is an amazing explosion of sounds and words that “get” me.

Running through my mind the last couple of days has been David Gray’s “This Year’s Love.” The first time I heard this song I was in graduate school – snuggled into my bed watching Felicity. The scene for which this song was the back ground took place in winter time New York. I recall a couple, who had struggled earlier in the episode, embracing as this song echoed in the back ground.

As soon as I heard the song, I loved it.

I wish there were some way that I could write about it in a way that would convey how it makes me feel, but I think I lack the tools and capability to be able to do so.

The song is simple – piano and Gray’s voice. What makes it so powerful is the timing – the pauses between words – the emotional ache in his voice as he sings. When I hear it, I can feel exactly what he is describing. Does that make sense?

This year’s love had better last
Heaven knows it’s high time
I’ve been waiting
On my own
Too long

Then piano….

When you hold me

Like you do
Feel so right
Ah now
Start to for-get
How my heart
gets
torn
when that hurt
gets thrown
feelin’
like you
can’t go on

Turning circles

when time again
It cuts like a knife
oh yeah
If you love me
got to know
 for sure

Piano....

Cos it takes something

more this time
Than sweet, sweet lies
ah now
Before I
open
up my
arms
and fall
Losing all
control
Every dream
inside
my soul

And when you kiss me
On that

Midnight
street
Sweep me
off my feet
Singing
ain't this life
so sweet
So whose to worry
If our hearts get torn
When that hurt gets thrown
Don't you know this life goes on
And won't you kiss me
On that midnight street
Sweep me off my feet
Singing ain't this life so sweet

The way I’ve broken this up is the way it sounds in my mind – where the pauses are between words – the way the emphasis sounds. Again, there is something about the longing ache in Gray’s voice. It captures a feeling that I have felt before at times in my life. In various relationships.

I guess it is the longing that I love. The sense of urgency. I have always wanted someone to feel that ache for me – the longing to be near – to know that love is real and that it isn’t going anywhere.

It should also come as no surprise that, hopeless romantic that I am, I am in love with the idea of being swept off my feet. I can imagine literally being picked up, held and kissed in a way that makes me breathless – shoots my heart rate through the roof such that, in any other context, I would be terrified I was having a heart attack.

Really, I have not done this song justice. I know. I’m certain there are technical terms, musical language, that would more accurately convey what Gray does as a singer that causes listeners, like me, to have such a visceral response to the music. If I were compiling a sound track for my life, “This Year’s Love” would definitely be on the list.

Alchemy?

What I am trying to believe about myself:

·         I am loveable.

·         I am worth the effort.

There are times when I absolutely hate the fact that I am a hopeless romantic; times when I wish I could simply eradicate this from my character. I imagine, with practice, I could. But there are other times when I love this about me.

Being a romantic means that I believe in the impossible; that I believe in miracles; that I believe the extraordinary can happen in real life even against the most seemingly impossible of odds. I enjoy thinking that, like my beloved Gatsby, I possess an “extraordinary gift for hope, a romantic readiness such as [Carraway] have never found in any other person and which it is not likely [he] shall ever find again.”

I want to believe in Alchemy – in the notion that if and when we believe, God and the universe conspires to help us find the treasure we seek – that which we desire most in our hearts.

All things considered, God has blessed me with incredible riches.

Despite the fact that I am a child of divorce, I have an amazing mother. My mother always made me the primary focus of her life. There was never a day of my life when I wasn’t told I was loved or that she was proud of me. I never wanted for anything. I never knew what the ache of hunger felt like in my belly.

While my relationships might have been short-lived and unorthodox, at best, I have been blessed with two amazing daughters. Brown-eyed beauties who are so snuggly and loving – intelligent and funny – that I sometimes wonder what role I have played in how incredible they are.  Slowly, I am learning to give myself credit for the love and nurturing I offer them. The perfect parent I am not, nor would I pretend to be. But I love them unconditionally and without limits. This has to be worth something.

So I sit here and I feel selfish for wanting more. For feeling like there is something missing in my life; like life remains, in some way, incomplete. Yet no matter how diligently I try to ignore this void, to stuff it away, it is there.

I desperately desire to be loved. To feel loved. To be someone’s heart’s desire. To be longed for and sought after – the pearl of great price.

The Alchemist was truly a life changing book for me; however, sometimes I wonder if I can’t separate fact from fiction – reality from dreams. And yet when I read this book it seemed to affirm for me every ‘romantic’ notion I have clung to my entire life.

“In alchemy, it’s called the Soul of the World. When you want something with all your heart, that’s when you are closest to the Soul of the World. It’s always a positive force.”

Romantic love. Married love. Best friend love. Unconditional love. This is what I desire with all my heart; what I have desired for as long as I can remember. In my quest for this, I must say I feel more spiritually connected to God than I have felt in a long time. I think I have finally learned and understand what it means to surrender.

Obviously, I would not have my daughters without the choices I made in my life; but those were my choices. As insane as this might seem to some people, I am really trying to allow God to lead me in the choices I make. I desire a lasting love relationship. Not one that is going to fracture and fall apart when life enters stages of difficulty or throws in obstacles that must be hurtled.

In those times, I want someone who is going to hold my hand so that we can overcome these things together.

“When a person really desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person realize his dream.”

I so desperately want to believe that this is true, but my beacon of hope dims a bit every day. The green light at the end of the dock becomes more difficult to spot through the fog.  

Like everyone else, I imagine, I have watched endless news feeds of the recent tragedy –blood-drenched theater patrons seeking asylum in a dazed mass exodus. As I have watched the footage, and both read and watched the commentary, my mind has been churning with questions since the news first broke.

Boil it all down to the most basic of queries and we are all left with one immense ‘WHY?’

Why does a seemingly intelligent, by all accounts ‘normal’ young man with opportunities for a bright future ahead of him, purchase 6,000 rounds of ammunition and plot out a plan designed to injure and kill innocent strangers?

Crimes of passion, while no less heinous, are predicated on irrational, over-zealous human emotion – love and hate can drive the most balanced of people in behaviorally insane directions.

I am in no way offering a pass on these crimes, but I can, at the very least, wrap my head around the “why” and simultaneously offer a variety of solutions to the problem that doesn’t end in homicide.

Walking into a movie theater and shooting into a crowd of complete strangers – this I simply cannot fathom. Is it an act of insanity or is this the personification of genuine evil?

Sitting in the safety of my family room in Easley, hundreds of miles removed from Colorado, I have not personally experienced what these victims or families are having to endure; yet, I am able to translate what I am seeing on the television news into an earnest sympathy and compassion for the events that have unfolded.

I will never again be able to walk into a movie theater without a heightened awareness of my surroundings – my fight or flight instinct at the ready to protect my children. And it makes me sad that this thought is now part of my conscious awareness.

Living in Pickens County (as opposed to Miami) has lulled me into a false sense of security.  The fact of the matter is what happened in Aurora could have happened in Easley. Obviously we all hope nothing like this ever happens here, but no one can definitively guarantee that we are immune to an act of terrorism such as this.

Still, we can’t all live our lives fearing what might happen. As senseless and horrible as the Aurora massacre continues to be, in some way I think it is another reminder for all of us to live each day to the fullest – as if it is our last.

Obviously we have responsibilities that cannot be cast to chance, but we can be a little more mindful of what is truly important in our lives: our children, our spouses, our parents, our siblings. Maybe we can let go of past insults and injuries, replacing those with a hug and an “I love you.”

None of us knows what is going to happen from one minute to the next, and there are things in life for which we cannot plan; the actions of others over which we cannot assert control.

This is why I never let a day (or an hour – who am I kidding?) elapse without telling and showing the people in my life that I love and value them.

Life, as we know it, is fragile; it can be turned upside down and inside out in an instant, when we least suspect it to happen.