The title track to this album is a love song, and a lovely one, at that. Simon married singer-songwriter Edie Brickell in 1992, so this song comes nearly 25 years into their marriage.
He asks if they would fall in love again if they met now: "If we met for the first time/ Could you imagine us falling in love again?" The language echoes his song "Old Friends": "Can you imagine us, years from today/ Sharing a park bench?"
(Side note: in that song, he muses, "How terribly strange to be 70." The year this album was released, Simon was 74.)
This song continues: "Words and melody... fall from the summer trees," he says, "So the old story goes." I have never heard the story of songs falling from trees... if any of my readers have, I hope they share that story with me.
Why is this here? Perhaps he means to say that he and his wife pair as well as words and melody, and as naturally as leaves falling from trees.
In any case, how wonderful and amazing that, after two decades and more, he still awaits her very "walk[ing] across his doorway." He is "jittery" with "joy," even. She is like a drug to him: "I cannot be held accountable for the things I do or say," when she is near.
He finds their relationship an "easy harmony," and it must be something when two such great singers actually do harmonize. And when there is a problem, the "old-time remedies" still work.
And oh, problems do happen. Some can be compared to repetitive-stress injuries: "Most of the time/ It's just hard working/ The same piece of clay / Day after day." The "clay" represents the banality of life... or, seeing as how Adam was made of clay, the banality of people.
Other problems lie not within the relationship, but its individual members: "Certain melodies tear your heart apart/ Reconstruction is a lonesome art." Some losses, like the death of a parent or a career downturn, affect one of them more than the other.
What else? "All the carnage." Again, this could refer to death or illness, but also fighting and saying hurtful things, separations and silences-- psychological damage. But these things are discreet and definable.
Others are more effusive and evasive: "All the useless detours." A couple could spend five years in a house neither likes, because each thinks the other one likes it. A couple could take years to decide to get married, or divorced, and just be living in a limbo of inertia.
But despite all these thing, he still believes: "Love endures." The song ends with Simon repeating "I love you" over and over in waltz time, then: "Words and melody/ Easy harmony." When they are in tune, what a beautiful song.
"I love to watch you walk across my doorway," he tells her-- still crazy about her, after all these years.
Musical Note:
This is one of the four songs Simon spiced with flamenco on this album; the others are "The Riverbank," "The Werewolf" and "Wristband." In this, some of the rhythms are actually recordings of the dancer's steps.
Some of the guitar was done by Cameroons native Vincent Nguini, who has been with Simon since Rhythm of the Saints.
Next Song: In a Parade
Showing posts with label happiness. Show all posts
Showing posts with label happiness. Show all posts
Wednesday, June 15, 2016
Monday, August 25, 2014
That Forever Kind of Love
Even thought this Johnny Cash-like number mentions grooms and brides, it will never be used as a wedding dance. How do we know? Its first lines are: "All of my friends who've gotten wed/ Seem to wish that they were dead." And, as they saying goes, it's all downhill from there.
"I'll lead a bachelor's life instead/ Unless I find/ That forever kind/ of love."
Divorce rates rose sharply in the late 1940s, then settled back down... but never to the almost-nil figures they had been. Still, the stigma on divorce-- societal, religious, etc.-- was still in force, and many unhappy marriages persisted.
"Take a happy bride and groom/ Look at them-- it's love in bloom," just like most of the pop songs of the day insisted it could, would... and should.
"But later, watch their dream go 'boom,'" Simon, as Landis, laments. "They didn't find/ That forever kind/ of love." [emphasis mine]
The chorus paints their average day: "He buries himself the paper/ She complains and nags and wails." For those of us who don't remember, "the paper" is what we called the newspaper, which was printed on actual paper and delivered stories of yesterday's events to our homes. So the more he ignores her, the more upset she gets, and the cycle escalates (it's a three-dimensional cycle, OK? Just... go read your paper.)
Our speaker is almost thoroughly disenchanted. After all, he has been sold in marital perfection since he was tucked in by Mother Goose and entertained by Walt Disney: "It seems like happy endings/ Are only in fairy tales."
Well, almost disenchanted. He still holds out hope that the "forever kind of love" exists, and that it will happen to him-- "I wouldn't mind/ That forever kind of love"-- and that the glow of early love will last: "Married and yet so starry-eyed... Forever groom and forever bride."
While there are many songs about wanting, finding, and getting love, there are far fewer about keeping it. And this one is about not keeping it. Again, yes, there are dozens of break-up songs, but the idea is that once you are married to the love of your life, you're finally done with all of that "Wishin', hopin', thinkin' and prayin'" and "tossin' and urnin'" that define the dating process.
But the speaker finds that even marriage is no guarantee of happiness and contentment! He surveys his married friends, and finds they have a whole new set of traumas and dramas to deal with.
"Why do fools fall in love?" then, as another song asks, answers itself. Why? Because they're fools! And "why must I be a teenager in love?" is also self-explained by the idea that we never stop being "teenagers" when it comes to love-- love make us teenagers all over again.
Our speaker is almost mature enough. He'll wait for the kind of love worth waiting for-- love with another person who wants to maintain that sense of wedding-day bliss. But soon after the wedding day-- actually, as soon as the ceremony is over-- we stop calling the couple "groom and bride" and pronounce them "husband and wife."
While it is wonderful to try to maintain that wedding-day bliss, it must also be understood that it is impossible to, under the stresses of daily life. Such high expectations cannot help but be dashed. The "forever kind of love," he will have to learn, is possible. It's just a different kind of love that the wedding-day kind-- not the same, as he thinks.
As a friend of mine puts it-- how many put all their planning into their wedding, which lasts just a day... and none into their marriage, which is supposed to last forever.
Next Song: The Growing Up Years
"I'll lead a bachelor's life instead/ Unless I find/ That forever kind/ of love."
Divorce rates rose sharply in the late 1940s, then settled back down... but never to the almost-nil figures they had been. Still, the stigma on divorce-- societal, religious, etc.-- was still in force, and many unhappy marriages persisted.
"Take a happy bride and groom/ Look at them-- it's love in bloom," just like most of the pop songs of the day insisted it could, would... and should.
"But later, watch their dream go 'boom,'" Simon, as Landis, laments. "They didn't find/ That forever kind/ of love." [emphasis mine]
The chorus paints their average day: "He buries himself the paper/ She complains and nags and wails." For those of us who don't remember, "the paper" is what we called the newspaper, which was printed on actual paper and delivered stories of yesterday's events to our homes. So the more he ignores her, the more upset she gets, and the cycle escalates (it's a three-dimensional cycle, OK? Just... go read your paper.)
Our speaker is almost thoroughly disenchanted. After all, he has been sold in marital perfection since he was tucked in by Mother Goose and entertained by Walt Disney: "It seems like happy endings/ Are only in fairy tales."
Well, almost disenchanted. He still holds out hope that the "forever kind of love" exists, and that it will happen to him-- "I wouldn't mind/ That forever kind of love"-- and that the glow of early love will last: "Married and yet so starry-eyed... Forever groom and forever bride."
While there are many songs about wanting, finding, and getting love, there are far fewer about keeping it. And this one is about not keeping it. Again, yes, there are dozens of break-up songs, but the idea is that once you are married to the love of your life, you're finally done with all of that "Wishin', hopin', thinkin' and prayin'" and "tossin' and urnin'" that define the dating process.
But the speaker finds that even marriage is no guarantee of happiness and contentment! He surveys his married friends, and finds they have a whole new set of traumas and dramas to deal with.
"Why do fools fall in love?" then, as another song asks, answers itself. Why? Because they're fools! And "why must I be a teenager in love?" is also self-explained by the idea that we never stop being "teenagers" when it comes to love-- love make us teenagers all over again.
Our speaker is almost mature enough. He'll wait for the kind of love worth waiting for-- love with another person who wants to maintain that sense of wedding-day bliss. But soon after the wedding day-- actually, as soon as the ceremony is over-- we stop calling the couple "groom and bride" and pronounce them "husband and wife."
While it is wonderful to try to maintain that wedding-day bliss, it must also be understood that it is impossible to, under the stresses of daily life. Such high expectations cannot help but be dashed. The "forever kind of love," he will have to learn, is possible. It's just a different kind of love that the wedding-day kind-- not the same, as he thinks.
As a friend of mine puts it-- how many put all their planning into their wedding, which lasts just a day... and none into their marriage, which is supposed to last forever.
Next Song: The Growing Up Years
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