Love Songs

John Legend, All of Me, One of the greatest love songs ever written in my opinion.

I was messing around on Chromcast the other day with my kids surrounding me. I decided to watch a few music videos that I enjoy. I do this occasionally, mostly to upset the kids with my musical tastes.

While a few of them played, I noticed how focused Bennet was on the screen. He seems to have inherited our love of music. He was all kinds of excited when Tracy gave him his own playlist on Spotify and announces with joy when he finds another band/song that he enjoys. I decided at that point to play some Electric Light Orchestra, which was my favorite band for much of the 70's, when I was the age Bennet is now. I can't tell you how much I wanted to meet Jeff Lynne, the frontman and genius behind ELO. He was quite boring to watch, but his lyrics really spoke to me at the time, and he had a way of engineering and producing a sound that was so distinctive. I wonder if Bennet will get to the point of appreciating music at that level.

As I watched Bennet in my periphery, I decided to put on a video that he might like, Bruno Mars' "Just the Way You Are". That, of course, was all I needed to start thinking about my own affair with love songs and how it affected the way I think about love.

Bruno Mars, This guy knows how to say everything.

I don't know what normal is, but I would like to think I'm kind of normal, but I did have an affinity towards love songs. I didn't let that on to my classmates and friends in my teens. I was firmly in the Heavy Metal scene for all intents and purposes, but I enjoyed listening to love songs. I wanted to find that someone that would accept me, someone who I could open up to, let all this emotion go.

I can't say that I found that in my teens, and by the time I felt comfortable with my feelings, I'm so practiced at holding them in that they still don't come out. I did date a few women that I wanted to open up to, let them know all that I felt and could feel, for that matter. I didn't get some of the subtle cues that let me know they were comfortable with that particular aspect of love. I admit freely that I can be intense when I want to be. One woman stated often that she felt love was blind AND stupid. I never really understood what that meant and I was too bottled up to ask. I didn't feel that way towards love or her. Love was freaking fantastic and I wanted so much of it that it scared me.

My daughter and I went to the library this afternoon and she stated, somewhat out of the blue, "I hate poetry."
"You do? Why?"
"It's boring. It doesn't make sense."
"Well, you like music don't you?"
"Yes."
"Songs are just poetry set to music. Poetry is all around you. Perhaps it isn't fair to push it on someone your age. I certainly didn't like it at your age. It took me several decades to appreciate it."
"But I don't know how to like it, you know, without the music."
"Well, perhaps you just haven't found the right kind, or you might not ever like it. You don't have to like it you know. Let me tell you, some of the best poetry I've found, with the most depth of feeling, was written by young women when they are just 19 or 20. Also, you might consider the stories of the poets themselves. There was a man named John Keats. He met and fell in love with a woman while staying with a friend one summer. He wrote her such beautiful poems and letters declaring how much he loved her. One summer he became fatally ill, contagious so he couldn't ever see her. As he was dying, his poems became desperate, his love all the more intense knowing that he would never see her again, never kiss her or eventually marry. He wrote his friends, family, some of the most profound, hopeless and frantic letters. He loved her so much, and he was slowly dying. That gives you a lot more feeling behind his poems."

I am not sure I convinced her, but it did convince me that I needed to finish this post. I hope you find a good love song and let it in, let it swirl around and change your view towards the world.

Perhaps if you do, you'll be able to say or sing to someone "You're all I need" too.