I’d heard about friends breaking up as a couple, and the difficulty one was experiencing afterward. Their story prompting Neil Sedaka’s song, “Breaking Up Is Hard To Do” to stream into my mind. I wasn’t thinking of his bouncy original from 1962, but the slower 1975 ballad that he released. I thought the latter showed a more adult approach to the lyrics and sentiments of breaking up. Anyone who’s gone through it knows how hard it can be.
Unasked
He’d known Taylor for a while and knew he had a son. Now he was meeting him for the first time.
Son was taller than father, but much more slender and quieter. Son was also about half of Dad’s sixty-five years. The years count for a lot.
Observing the son, he wondered and asked him, “Are you like your mother?”
Son replied, “God, I hope not.”
Conversations erupted, and the questions that erupted from that answer couldn’t raised.
Thursday’s Theme Music
Today’s song streamed into my head after I thought of another song.
The other song was “Sara Smile”, by Hall and Oates, which I thought of after meeting a friend’s daughter named Sarah. After thinking about it while walking, I remembered “She’s Gone” by the same duo.
“She’s Gone” (1974) came out during a period of struggle in my relationship with my girlfriend. I’d graduated high school and she was traveling Europe with a nun. I felt lost, and ended up enlisting in the military, upsetting just about everyone I knew. That’s life, right? “She’s Gone” appealed to my sense of loss, frustration, searching, and self-pity. I particularly enjoyed the lyrics, “Think I’ll spend eternity in the city. Let the carbon and monoxide choke my thoughts away, yeah.”
What a time. Hormones, you know? Etc.
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.
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?
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.
The Sneeze
It was an expulsion from his mouth and nose, a rejection of foreign bodies irritating his systems,
And a trigger for the cat to leap up from deep sleep and scurry from the noisy monster (who is usually quiet and friendly, especially when he has food or treats) into another room’s safety,
And a cue for the dog to say, “Hello!” (woof),
And a signal for annoyance to fly through his wife’s expression as she says, “That’s one.”
The State
He said, “I’m really optimistic. I think I have a chance here.” He frowned. “Or am I in denial?”
She continued to focus on her laptop. He said, “That’s your opening, sweetie.”
She said, “You’re not in denial. You’re in California.”
She Said
she said, Why did you do that? Don’t you know better?
and she said, No, I don’t feel any warmth for you, so I can’t.
and she said, Call me, and you said, I will.
and she said, You never called, and you said, nothing.
she said, You smell.
and she said, I could never be with someone like you.
and she said, I think you can do anything that you try to do.
and she said, I wish you would have said something.
she said, Stay away from me, I hate you right now.
and she said, Hi, it’s good to see you.
and she said, Let’s get together.
and she said, Good-bye.
Telling
Your silence tells me
something must be wrong
I can’t tell by your face
It’s blank as stone
It bothers me to hear you
staying so still
No matter what I say
Emptiness is all I feel
My words run dry
trying to dig something out
I don’t know where to turn
so I just walk out
there’s a distance in the feet between us
that can’t be measured or crossed
I feel my efforts are wasted
and our time has been a loss
Conversing
You ever feel like you’re talking to someone who is having half of the conversation in their head, not saying the words but believing they had?
It can be confusing and exhausting.
Michael Seidel, writer 