Tag: love

Sunday’s Theme Music

Today’s theme music is “(If Loving You Is Wrong) I Don’t Want to be Right”. Humming along with it as it flowed through my stream this morning during the routines, I thought about the song’s complex, grown-up nature.

I was sixteen when the song was released in 1972 and going through the standard processes involving discovering love and sex. Little did I know how complicated it could all be. The big lie still held about finding someone and falling in love, marrying for laugh, and growing old together. Big cracks were appearing in the big lie. Love and sex, as well as gender identity and sexual orientation are all more complicated than the big lie’s straightforward depiction. Then religion society gets involved – a black man and a white woman? Social norms add new pressures and dimensions.

That’s behind the song. He’s in love with another woman, having an affair and cheating on his wife. And the woman is having an affair with a married man. Both of those are taboo. The man understands that he has commitments. Needs change.

I’m not trying to defend him so much as think about how complicated love, sex, society, marriage and life can be. It’s not as clean and simple as the big lie leads us to believe.

Am I wrong to fall so deeply in love with you
Knowing I got a wife and two little children
Depending on me too
And am I wrong to hunger
for the gentleness of your touch
knowing I got somebody else at home
who needs me just as much

And are you wrong to fall in love
With a married man
And am I wrong trying to hold on
To the best thing I ever had

h/t to songfacts.com

Of course, the other part of this is what it would do to his wife if she discovered his betrayal, and what could result from that, nor what the guilt can do to him and his thinking and psyche.

Many performers and groups have covered this R&B classic, but that original voice and music is seared into my brain. Luther Ingram didn’t write it, but he delivered the sound.

 

 

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Today’s song emerges from the country-rock genre (crock?) and the mists of 1973. 1973 was a good year and a bad year, a memorable year and a forgettable year, a year of tests and trials and learning, and a year of growing, wondering, coping with hormones, and passing days doin’ nothin’. I was seventeen for ’bout half of the year, and sixteen for the other half.

“Amie”, by Pure Prairie League, is a light melody with folkish overtones. The lyrics are easy to hear, learn, and remember. It’s a good song to sing to your floofs, should you feel a need to sing to them.

As always, the lyrics catch me. When hearing the song, you might think, this is about the singer trying to woe Amie. It’s not. This is about the man’s ambivalence about his relationship with Amie, and her decision to move on. Meanwhile, he laments that she’s taking so long to decide. The decision’s been made, dude.

Don’t you think the time is right for us to find
All the things we thought weren’t proper could be right in time?
And can you see which way we should turn, together or alone?
I can never see what’s right or what is wrong
Oh, you take too long

Read more: Pure Prairie League – Amie Lyrics | MetroLyrics

Most telling is at the end, as he sings, “I keep falling in and out of love with you.” Amie knows this, and she’s tired of it. That’s why he’s asking, “Aime, what you wanna do?” He’s in full denial and full of hope.

She is not.

NOTE: This analysis is my own. As with anything I say or write, it could be complete bullshit. Just think of it as Schrödinger’s bullshit.

 

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Some Dreams

I spy little dreams

secreted behind the schemes

coming and going today

 

Little dreams

hiding in the dark

fearing the people

that break them apart

 

Some dreams

aren’t meant to be

but who could say which one

 

Some dreams 

are down to essentials

like

I just want to live

and find love

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Wednesday’s Theme Music

“Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” (1981) has me hooked today. I enjoy the middle part where the vocalist (Sting) laments,

I resolve to call her up a thousand times a day
And ask her if she’ll marry me in some old fashioned way
But my silent fears have gripped me
Long before I reach the phone
Long before my tongue has tripped me
Must I always be alone?

h/t AZLyrics.com

I think that passage captures the angst that so many encounter when trying to move their relationship forward through the waves of love, hope, fear, and doubt.

I also think often of this song, and how the magic of a relationship changes through the years. The magic remains but often comes in different guises from the magic that we first experienced. Every now and then, though, that first magic is felt and remembered, one more time.

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Perfumed

The perfume of you and I

still intertwines

with the thoughts of what we doing

what we meant to say

before we went away

left me wondering who we think we’re fooling

we never talk

and stay distant in our walks

with a feeling that something’s brewing

it never boils and never perks

but it’s always there, it always lurks

I think our love is cooling

 

 

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Old Love

Old love ties me to you

Sometimes, it gets us through

But sometimes, it’s like a crevasse in the way,

Something to avoid, something that darkens the day

 

Old love is a weight on my chest

Sometimes, though, it brings out my best,

But sometimes, it’s like I can’t breath,

Sometimes, sometimes, it’s short of my needs

 

Old love is a whisper in my mind

My look at you reminds me of old times

and a future so bright I had to wear shades

Old love never dies, but, yes, it fades

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What Else?

He was surprised. She had never spoken of her ex in kind terms. “Why?” he said.

She considered her words. “What else could I do? He was dying. He’d had cancer. I loved him once. We had two children together.”

It had been the third marriage for both, he knew. Each had children from a previous marriage. Lasting ten years, personal sturm and drang struck every day.

Her tired face softened. “He’d asked his children for help. They turned him down. He came to me. He said, “I don’t want to die in a little room alone.” So I took him in, put a bed in the living room, and cared for him until he died.

“What else could I do?”

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Today’s Theme Music

Today’s music, from two thousand eight, is by Lady Gaga. When I hear a song, I try understanding what’s being sung and the words’ meanings. “Poker Face” seemed ambiguous, at once about sex and gambling. I liked the combination because sex and love is a gamble taken, a roll of the dice, and relationships often become efforts in reading others’ expressions to discern agenda, meanings, and truth.

I later read that Lady Gaga wrote the song about her rock and roll boyfriends. That knowledge didn’t answer all my questions about the lyrics. Still, it’s a good song to stream as you beat the street in the heat.

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Love’s Fabric

He saw him across the swirl of activity. It took some effort to press himself closer for a better look. As he made his way past an entanglement of shirts, jeans and underwear, the other spotted him.

Despite his heritage and their obvious differences, instant attraction occurred. Shedding regard for what others might make of it, the old black rayon polyester blend, a plain sock from an inexpensive store, began dancing with the young gray and black wool Gold Toe. Soon they found commonalities. Both were dress socks, although for different occasions, meant for a man, sizes ten through thirteen, and shared a calf-high design.

It wasn’t long before they were entangled in intimate acts within the dryer’s hot confines. Opprobrium rapidly followed. “You already have mates,” they were told. “Think of them. And the authorities will separate you, once the cycle ends.”

Knowing this was true, they spent as much time as possible together. Some sympathetic plaid boxer shorts approached them. “There’s a way out of here,” she said. Yes, stories of that underground dryer vent was woven through their society.

A buzzer’s warning pierced the cylinder. The cool down cycle. Little time remained. They made their decision. Love was hard to find among the clothes. They followed the secret route out, hopefully, to happiness.

It helped to be open to looking past another’s materials and age to find love, but to fully embrace it was to fully embrace the unknown, and venture into new realms.  It would be hard, but they knew it would be harder yet to give up without trying.

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