Monday, March 31, 2008

Resonance

My taste in music runs far and wide -- if something clicks it just clicks; C has said that he's got something in his huge music collection to offend everyone. Often our tastes overlap, often they do not, and we have both been known to broaden the horizon of the other musically. Last week I went to T.arget, looking to spend money I don't have, and on the way there I heard a song on the radio by Sara B.areilles. It's the song that gets a lot of play on the radio around here, and it took a bit for me to accept that I liked it, and I was curious about the album. What the hell, i though. It was ten bucks. It was a good ten bucks spent, I'm enjoying it. When I told C I picked it up, he said, that he had just been checking her out on line, curious, too. Just coincidence that we were both interested independently of each other. Doesn't happen too often.

*****

Music has always been evocative for me. Though I started piano at 4 and cello at 10, I've never been a particularly strong musician, at least in performance, in creating the music. But throughout my life, like many people, there are songs that simply resonate; they make me not just laugh, but feel joy; they articulate my feelings, my experience; they make me not just weep, but seem to validate, perhaps even mediate, my pain. When I'm sad, I tend to apply my sad story to whatever music I'm listening, too, to see if the words fit, if they tell my story without my words. Yeah, neurotic. Whatever.

There's a song on the B.areilles album that I can't quite get enough of, One.Sweet.Love. I'm certain she's talking about romantic love, but somehow the words resonate for me, in my struggle with infertility and pregnancy loss, particularly (obviously) the loss of my boys, the fear of never having living children. I linked the full lyrics to the song title above, but here's a chunk of them, taken from the middle of the song:

Sleepless nights you creep inside of me
Paint your shadows on the breath that we share
You take more than just my sanity
You take my reason not to care.
No ordinary wings I'll need
The sky itself will carry me back to you
The things I dream that I can do I'll open up
The moon for you
Just come down soon

[CHORUS]
The time that I've taken
I pray is not wasted
Have I already tasted my piece of one sweet love?
Ready and waiting for a heart worth the breaking
But I'd settle for an honest mistake in the name of
One sweet love.

Savor the sorrow to soften the pain sip on
The southern rain
As I do, I don't look don't touch don't do anything
But hope that there is a you.

*****
I recently came across Sarah Mc.Lachlan's Surfacing album, too, In particular, the track title Do.What.You.Have.To.Do. This song wrecked me. Wrecked me. Go ahead, ask C. It had been years since I heard this album, but it seems it was specifically written for me to bawl my eyes out to (how did SM know about me and my boys?). When I heard this, I could see myself in the hospital when my water broke, before labor, during labor, as we were leaving, as I sit in the dark waiting for sleep to come...

Have you heard that song? Full lyrics are linked to the song title, but here's a little sample, another chunk from the middle of it:

and I have the sense to recognize that
I don't know how to let you go
every moment marked
with apparitions of your soul
I'm ever swiftly moving
trying to escape this desire
the yearning to be near you
I do what I have to do
the yearning to be near you
I do what I have to do
but I have the sense to recognize

that I don't know how
to let you go
I don't know how
to let you go

*****

I've always been a big crier. And usually I feel much better after I have a good cry -- songs like these often do the trick for me. What about you? What are your weepies? Or what songs make you feel better, feel good? Maybe in another post i'll find songs that do make me feel good (or used to, anyway).

Or, is it poetry? Movies? Something else? What resonates for you?

5 comments:

Busted said...

Music has always triggered my tears. Certain songs, just the melodies can make me cry. Specifically, "Hallelujah" (Jeff Buckley's version) and Iz's "Somewhere Over the Rainbow". The song that I think I will always connect to my Doodles and will make me cry for them is Alicia Keys' "No One" - surprising since I usually hate mainstream, especially R&B, music, but when we were pregnant we had a scare with AFP tests and thought one or both Doodles' might have had a neural tube defect, and this song made me feel better by listening to the refrain "Everything's Gonna be Alright". DH and I listened to the song the other night and both of us just started bawling. The lyrics made me think of the Doodles so much.

THe lyrics to both of the songs you posted are beautiful and poignant. I am going to download both so I can hear them.

Tash said...

I have a playlist blog somewhere back in the archives (I was a violinist as a kid/young adult) and it was only when I wrote down the songs and lyrics that I realized how fucking upbeat they were. I can't listen to down music anymore. Just can't. Fingers in the ears.

c. said...

There are quite a few songs that resonate with me; White F.lag from Did.o is one of my faves. It's surprising to me how many songs are about dead babies...or wait, maybe it's love they talk of. In any case, there are many that bring me to tears.

Antigone said...

The Freshman.

Mrs. Cup said...

Okay. Long story short. I have been lurking on Busted Babymaker. Then I found your husbands blog and now yours. I literally have been reading them all day. Making my boss proud I am sure. I haven't left a comment on any of the three blogs. There are no words that I could even begin to say that could possibly offer you any consolation. I can't even begin to imagine your sorrow. I am sorry. I feel stupid even saying that but I truly am. Even being a total stranger. And I am sorry for your husband and BB. Maybe I will tell them too. But this post has rocked my core today from some reason. I just bought the Sara Bareilles album. Its a good one. But SM sends shivers down my spine. Just reading the lyrics to that song gave me goose bumps. That is the song I heard on the radio after my grandmother died. It's an amazing song. I listen to it to remember her. To remember her smell, the way she tickled my back when I was a little girl and couldn't fall asleep, the way she always let me decorate every single Christmas cookie by myself, the way she didn't yell at me when I spilled the entire jar of beets on her new white carpet, the way, that even on her fixed income, she sent me $25 a month when I was in college, the way she begged me to become an independent woman and to never depend on a man for anything, the way she held my face when she was dying and begged me to be strong. WOW! I miss her everyday. Sorry for the long rambling comment. Your post touched me.