Love song blog

The Mission – Butterfly on a Wheel

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It’s cynical yet romantic, with idioms and images that sound clichéd, but presented in such combinations that the song turns into a kind of kaleidoscope, fascinating while ordinary, a collection of contradictions.

The title comes from an Alexander Pope poem and refers to the use of excessive force to achieve something minor. The “wheel” means Catherine wheel, a torture device meant for breaking bones. Calling love something that breaks the wings of a butterfly sounds cynical, but feels somehow familiar to anyone who’s ever been disappointed. If one doesn’t think of the wheel as a torture device I guess it might be possible to see it as something positive too: love is a powerful emotion that smashes through our fears as if they were always very fragile. It is the knife that cuts through our preconceptions, the expectations of rejection, indifference and unkindness, so common in this world that genuine affection and caring is surprising, always transformative.

A butterfly on a torture device, the trembling, shivering human soul. Going through heartbreak and disappointment one might feel that love is something to be avoided because it made us vulnerable. But there’s another way to see it. Love only reveals the vulnerability that was always there. Two contrasting viewpoints: love is blindness, or love is clarity. Perception is always subjective, our theories of reality coloured by our emotions, unconscious fears and desires turning into rationalized arguments. I cannot say which would be correct, but I do believe life is more pleasant, social situations more stimulating and fulfilling, if you see love as clarity, something that reveals the true nature of things. Saying that no true essence exists may provide intellectual satisfaction, yet in ordinary life we always recourse to something more emotional to take the place of truth.

Also this idiom: “All is fair in love and war”. It sounds like a recipe for abusive relationships, stalking and harassing. Like many old sayings, from today’s perspective it seems completely wrong, and believing in its truthfulness only leads to sorrow. People have wildly different concepts of love, sometimes so different that they seem complete opposites. It may be gentleness and acceptance, but also obsessiveness relabeled as passion. And when the different conceptions clash, what was an expectation of safety in vulnerability turns into torture.

Regardless of the approach, love is something that makes us feel complete, or at least it’s a vision that promises completeness. It does not have to be a romantic partner who triggers it. Love is trust that makes us transcend our ego and direct our gentleness toward the world, whether it is toward humanity, our children, or something more abstract and vague.

All these colourful encounters, the small touches, the eternal springtime of a trusting disposition. I see your beauty in the grey light of an ordinary cloudy day. I see my own significance in a universe where a human being is a speck of dust, I reach out toward you. We smile. We greet. We thank each other for small favours, and for existing, for seeing and hearing. The small talk, the visit from a neighbour, the completeness of existence each moment despite the tendency to see imperfection, things to be corrected, silence to be achieved. And the happy greeting, the acknowledgement that this is the person you share your life with, choosing him or her time after time. Love, the healing balm, the attentiveness, the presence, the tenderness. If only we could always see each other like this.

Françoise Hardy – Sí, mi caballero

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Hardy’s 1971 album La Question wasn’t well received at the time, but now it stands as a landmark of breathy sensuality and poetic imagery. The singing style has become so much more popular now that it’s easy to think it sounds affected. Yet even now the quiet melancholy of this love song sounds somewhat mysterious.

Why the Spanish “caballero” in a song otherwise in French? It’s derived from the word for “horse” and means gentleman, a knight, and later in Mexico came to mean a cowboy. But it meant rather the wealthier cattle owners than the labourers who were called vaqueros. So if I’ve got it correctly, the title could be translated as “Yes, my gentleman” or “Yes, my cowboy”, but both are somewhat misleading.

More generally the song is for a gentleman who is still in touch with the earth and nature, not someone who is sipping champagne in a yacht. While the image of a cowboy is largely positive in books and movies, in English (or French) the connotation of gentlemanly conduct isn’t as strong as it would be with the Spanish word, though there’s nothing inherently incompatible either.

I’m a bit uncertain whether the Spanish part says “Si” or “Sí,” if or yes. It may call for a deconstructive reading, but I think it’s safe to assume that affirmation is meant instead of conditionality when there’s no consequence clause. Thus:

“Sí, mi caballero, j’aimerais bien être
La blanche poussière qui suit ton troupeau”

“Yes, my cowboy, I’d love to be the white dust that follows your herd”. Later there are clear if-clauses in French, which adds to the interplay of meanings: is the singer accepting her lover’s assertions or coming up with conditions of her own? At the very least when she follows up with “If I were dust, I would follow you. If I were a blade of grass, you would carry me,” she’s making them her own, regardless of the origin.

I’m reminded of Hegel’s dialectic of the master and the slave. Who is in control when the act of surrendering starts to define the relationship as a whole? The yearning is defined by the narrator, and yet she sings in Spanish “yes, my cowboy” as if it’s a series of answers to questions we cannot hear, an affirmation of the gentleman’s wishes and expectations. But we simply do not know whether it’s an emphatic “Yes! I mean it!” or an affirmation, which further adds to the mystery of the song.

“Il me suffirait sur tes lèvres sèches, d’être goutte d’eau.”
“It would be enough for me to be a drop of water on your dry lips.”

It is a song about the totality of love, the surrendering that makes us more than what we are. It may sound like giving up one’s own will, becoming an inanimate object, content in merely serving one’s lover. But it is not all. Embracing the world, becoming every object, the dust, a blade of grass, a drop of water. I am everywhere and nowhere at once. In love I transcend my ego. The neediness seems overwhelming, so much so that it blurs the concepts of surrendering and demanding.

It makes the act of surrendering even more complete if you think that even these images of dust and grass were provided by the lover. But therein lies also the escape. You cannot control the dust, nor the drops of water. Love is given freely, and it cannot be grabbed by force.

Liberation. I forget myself, thereby I am free of the fetters of my past, of my needs, of the politics that ruled me, the body that demanded attention. I am the falling feather, the breath on your skin, I am the pleasure that I give, feeling this immense desire to share, to be the shiver that travels through the world, through my body and yours as we sigh in unison.

In the act of sharing I lose myself, and yet gain much more: the pleasure of swaying in the wind, the pleasure of becoming always something else, the leaves, the stars. In comparison, being a cowboy seems terribly restrictive. Immanence is imprisonment. Love, freedom, surrendering, transcendence. Let us be everything for each other, in each other, in this embrace, the dust and the cowboy, the lips and the water. This wonder, this unity, this independence in belonging, this permanence in becoming.

Marlena Shaw – You

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Marlena Shaw’s 1975 album ‘Who Is This Bitch, Anyway?’ sounds defiant, and that’s how she looks in the cover picture as well. But the tracks themselves are surprisingly soft, soulful love songs, albeit with some that celebrate the sexual union and desire in a way that perhaps were pretty bold at the time. But in these songs there’s always gentleness and the idea that sex is a part of a greater feeling of unity with the loved one.

“You” touches on a spiritual dimension. Here love isn’t described with images of the sacred like in some other songs I’ve explored, but rather God is thanked for the existence of this love, this one person who was proved to be steadfast and faithful in a world where it may be hard to trust others.

It’s a feeling I can recognize even as an atheist: when after years of being on your own you find someone special, someone who returns your feelings, there’s a deep sense of gratitude without direction. There’s gratitude toward your lover, of course, for being the way she is, but also something greater, a recognition that we are all somewhat helpless. We try to choose who we are, try to be our best selves, and yet there is always so much that just happens, emotions that aren’t controlled, thoughts that emerge out of the complex interplay between unconscious impulses and sudden encounters. The more aware you are of how you can’t control exactly who you become, the more miraculous it seems that you find someone compatible, someone with similar dreams, the same wish to build a life together. Even if it is what most people want, it feels like this is something unique. Partly it may be the hormones, and partly the realization of how many ways there are to screw things up, and how precious it is to hold on to the same dream, even just for a moment.

And that brings us to the realm of the divine: this feeling that mutual love seems so unlikely in this world that it starts to seem like a miracle. And also the gratitude, discovering something so great that it feels like an enormous gift. We search for an intention, a purpose, and find it in the subtle acts of tenderness, the fleeting sensual pleasures, the overwhelming trust for the present and the future, and sometimes even the past is transformed: the wounds of yesterday no longer matter when you are intimate with someone. But it is not a gift in the sense of something being given away or sacrificed. It is endless sharing, this willingness to understand and be understood, to open up at the risk of being hurt, seeing that the trust was not misplaced, and discovering in that trust our real selves, free to explore the myriad possibilities our feelings and thoughts may take. Such an overwhelming feeling inevitably inspires gratitude without direction, because it doesn’t seem like there’s one choice behind it. We choose to be with each other every moment, through each caress and each conflict. Sometimes there is perhaps one moment that is remembered as more significant than others, when we realized that this is what we want, but love isn’t reduced to that one decision, that one “I do.”

The plurality of moments makes it complex, and the strength of feeling, the unity of desire, makes it simple. You want to thank the universe, or God, your lover, the wind and the woods, for everything seems more meaningful now, everything has led to this moment when you discover yourself and your capability to reach out, to be unselfish, to think of the greater good. You and I, and this cosmos, this order in chaos, the emotion that makes everything right again.

Buffy Sainte-Marie – Until It’s Time for You to Go

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A song of impermanence more sweet than bitter, a plea to keep loving as long as possible, realizing that coming from different worlds may be an insurmountable obstacle, but at least for a while it is possible to stand on that obstacle together, see what the world looks like on the top. To love, to stay together, to make a choice to try to make it work until it’s impossible.

The future doesn’t exist, and the past seems like a dream. Being infatuated both the future and the past are usually transformed. What used to be the main stumbling blocks in life suddenly is insubstantial, utterly changed. The power of bad memories disappears. Love is blind not only because we disregard the flaws or warning signs in each other, but also because we become blind to our own wounds. But such blindness can just as well be described as a moment of clarity: whatever is in the past can be left behind, and the only thing making past experiences powerful is how we keep clinging to them in the present. It’s all in the mind, these diaphanous thoughts and feelings through which we can see the light of the moon, a new infatuation that beckons us to cast away the gauze. “Don’t ask why / Don’t ask how”; these are the question related to the past. The answers would be explanations that would situate the attraction in a continuum of memories. But it is not necessary. Even the future is not necessary, only that we choose to love each other here and now.

And yet: “don’t ask forever”. There is a recognition that the future still exists, we must keep living on, and that there’s a limit to how long we can be together. The third verse is somewhat ambiguous, since you can interpret it to mean that the relationship is already ending. But it’s not a terrible stretch to hear it as a plea to stay in the moment, retaining this feeling, no matter when the ending comes. All we know is that the end exists, whether it is the death of feelings tomorrow or the death of a partner decades in the future.

What about this: “This love of mine had no beginning / it has no end”? It’s sometimes said as a joke that love does not end, only the object changes. The rather dark humour comes from the fact that usually it’s not love that has such an unchanging quality. Instead, it’s the need to be accepted. And people who are most damaged may hold on to that need as if it was something noble, jumping from one relationship to another in succession.

However, there is a truer meaning to this thought. It is possible to find in oneself love that persists, the feeling of happiness and joy in one’s own existence, gentleness toward oneself, acceptance of one’s flaws, rejoicing in simply being in the world, whatever we may encounter. That kind of love is strength instead of weakness, and once discovered, it does not have to end. It does not need to seek a new object of admiration because the world is wonderful enough to provide happiness. And it also means that if there would come a time for the loved one to go, however that happens, we are able to accept it. There is joy in the world, and joy in being able to share it.

Love remains a guiding feeling, a principle that brings colours into the world. Let us be good and gentle with each other, even if everything is impermanent. Let us travel through the shadows hand in hand, find significance in each other. Let us stay here, trusting in each other, making the choice to look one another in the eyes, truthfully, believing in good intentions. There are always endings, but they are not here yet, while there’s still time to smile, to touch, to keep on loving right now until all the smiles have faded, touches are no longer felt, and the now has disappeared into the murky waters of history, never to return.

Simple Minds – Someone Somewhere in Summertime

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Another song of longing that yet feels like it’s for someone specific, with images and feelings that are so clearly defined that it’s almost like the loved one is already here. When there is already love within, the line between songs of longing and love start to blur.

There is something cinematic about this, and I associate the tune with scenes that felt like that. One is from the time I used to listen to this song a lot: a tiny street in a small town in Wales, the buildings looking taller than they are because the houses were so close, with just enough room for one person to walk and one car to pass, and the street curving so that I’m reminded of a maze, even if there wasn’t enough complexity to get lost. There one evening I was walking briskly in the rain when I saw a couple kissing, oblivious to anything that happened around them. The rain didn’t exist, and the drab little town was transformed into something special. The blue and the gray suddenly more vibrant, full of life, the rain all the more romantic.

I have seen a similar scene only a couple of times. The rain makes it special because it reminds me of what love can be like, how it makes us forget anything that we normally deem bad, like being wet and shivering, because we suddenly have the confidence that no matter what happens, there is someone near, someone who cares, holding hands or kissing. It doesn’t matter if the world is cold and people are indifferent to suffering. If there’s only one person, that is enough, “Burning slow, walking in the soft rain”.

It’s a simple thought: “Somewhere there is someone who can see what I can see” – whatever we see, there is the wish that we could share it. But it’s not at all evident that sharing is possible, because what we hold dearest may be something that others do not even see, at least not in its full significance. Be it kisses in the rain, an iridescent beetle on a forest path, the softness of moss, the shape of a stone perfect to hold, whatever we find beautiful, what makes the world meaningful, we want to share it. There might not be any intrinsic purpose, or even intrinsic beauty: it is all subjective, and thereby we cannot take for granted that others will understand our view. It is such a great experience to feel the beauty of the world, but right next to it is the feeling of loneliness if we are led to believe that no-one else understands, no-one sees it the same way, or even pays attention to it.

And that’s what the song reminds me of. The sounds, the scents of summer: they may be different in each part of the world, like all the things we find significant in the landscape. Some people look at the hills and the horizon, others listen to a blackbird, want to smell the bark of a pine tree. And the most significant thing of all seems to be the moment when you can share these things, experience beauty together. And when a relationship ends, one of the hardest things is that when you have got used to sharing everything, it’s difficult to return to finding significance in all these things in themselves, without the extra jolt from finding wonderment together, in the world, in each other, in yourself.

Golden lights, dreams so real they feel like memories of the future, of all the summers spent together, knowing not who it may be, what forms your journey of mutual discovery may take, where you might find all the beauty that this connectedness, this communication entails. The recognition of hope, intangible, though the dreams take specific shapes only to fade away. The thought remains that it must be real in some form: someone, somewhere in summertime.

Linda Perhacs – If You Were My Man (demo)

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The fragile dreams, the strength in tenderness. Waking up in the morning and knowing that the one you love is right there, even before you open your eyes. Feeling the warmth, the body close, the skin so smooth. And yet it is just the body. Waking up much earlier, I baked some bread rolls. And coffee. Waking up to a kiss, the first kiss of the day, the first kiss of the universe, for this is how the world begins, in a flash of love that stretches through the day, the dream that keeps on becoming life.

And yes, it may be an autumn day, gray and rainy, but it is made all the more lovely by the contrast when you are aware of the warmth inside, the gratitude; thank you for letting me love you. It seems too glib to say it out loud, or wrong in other ways. Love is a choice, and letting someone in is a choice. Thoughts and impulses are seeds that you may choose to nourish or wilt, and the tree grows into heaven, here in the bedroom, the mornings spent together, holding each other, whether it is for a long time or just for two minutes before the breakfast. It is a choice made each day, and yet it doesn’t feel like a choice but something inevitable because it keeps happening every morning until you can’t imagine a future without this intimacy that makes the world more colourful, the sounds brighter, the scent of the loved one incomparable to anything.

There are no demands at this moment, and gratitude of your existence, of your presence near me, of your willingness to stay beside me, is not a demand either. If such a thing as purity can be real in the human condition, it is this hazy mood, the feeling of surrender and the experience of our souls blending, the secure feeling of always having someone on your side which makes you all the more independent. Because you can dare to do anything, or attempt it, to dream, to fall. No requirements except the willingness to be loved. How ridiculous people’s demands seem: must have certain height, certain weight, a job with good salary, personality traits that are compatible with mine in some internet questionnaire. Yet this is all that matters, the humour of it all: the recognition of value in what we cannot value in ourselves, the shape of your hips compared to mine, the femininity, the masculinity, the different places of softness, the subtlety of shapes, and the sounds you make when breathing happiness, a kiss on the neck, fingers slow on the thigh, with no aim but to express this desire for unity, for connection. How the day begins. How life begins.

We discover each other, discover ourselves as lovable. This is what we could be. One is capable of feeling complete in solitude as well, but as a couple it is something more, shared completeness. The recognition of beauty in a universe in which all beauty is a subjective experience. There you are, opposite me eating the bread roll. Touching your hand, smiling. This is real. I am more real at this moment, being seen, being loved.

And all it takes is letting someone in, though it has to be mutual, otherwise there’s nothing. Touching the skin, but more importantly, touching the soul, how vulnerable it makes us feel, how complete.

Cliff Richard – Miss You Nights

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It’s not hard to understand why Cliff chose to cover this Dave Townsend song. The story goes that Townsend wrote the song for his girlfriend and recorded it on an album that was shelved by Island Records, which then recouped the cost by offering the songs to be covered. The arrangement on the original is pretty much the same as here, including the phrasing, but Richard’s soft voice and slight vocal emphases do make the song just a little bit more tender.

Cliff Richard is not only known for a long career singing love songs, but he’s also often ridiculed for being a vocal born-again Christian. This song seems to hit both spots. Even though it’s written for a partner, the arrangement makes it sound like a gospel song, a kind of hymn. And it’s not a huge stretch to imagine the “you” in the lyrics being God, something longed for, someone who knows all the secrets you have and still loves you.

It’s not an uncommon trope, but one I find quite fascinating because the writer must walk a fine line to retain the ambiguity between the sacred and the profane in such songs. It represents love as salvation and the ultimate meaning of life, a transformative experience that is our only possibility to transcend earthly worries. But it is not always described as pleasant. Some albums that come to mind are Leonard Cohen’s Various Positions and I’m Your Man, as well as Depeche Mode’s Songs of Faith and Devotion (the title itself a Cohen reference, I believe). These albums are filled with songs that are presumably addressed to a loved one, with slight hints of bitterness, while using the language of religious texts

In this song there’s no such bitterness, but some disappointment thinking about the world, the loneliness that is the human lot, and yet there’s hope that love offers salvation. Even if love is present, nights become long when you’re not connected. But what is really required for the connection to be true? I’d say that what you need is a connection to the love itself and not its object, a connection to your own feelings, being present to yourself and the surroundings.

The more sensual you are, aware of the stars, aware of the cold sheet, aware of the wind whimpering outside, the more you transcend earthly worries simply because you’re not focusing on yourself. Ecstasy, considering its Greek root words, literally means standing outside, which I gather means standing outside yourself, the concept of who you are. It doesn’t matter. And that feeling is something very close to what we can achieve with the loved one, feeling complete while forgetting ourselves, whether it is in the little unselfish acts or in the physical union, every touch, every kiss becoming a method of being more present in the world and less trapped in our thoughts.

Of course for many people such an experience is not easy to achieve because it requires surrendering. The layers of protection we place upon our being are too thick to just drop suddenly, so it may require practice. It’s as if the soul is permanently clinched around itself and needs to open up after all the insults, coercion and demands we often face when becoming adults. Protecting ourselves from unhappiness we also place barriers against happiness.

But it’s not happiness that would be waiting outside to enter. It’s happiness that is generated simply in the act of reaching out, sensing the world, smiling, seeing that smile returned, touching another beautiful person, getting to know all the similarities and differences there are.

This surrendering is essential, which is why these songs that hint at the sanctity of love are so touching. It is a shame that pop music in the recent decades has largely veered away from such expressions, preferring strength and defiance lest one is considered ridiculous, too mushy. But love cannot really flourish when there’s fear of being ridiculous. Love is the ability to be ridiculous because you are accepted, no matter how naive your actions may look to others.

And still. These miss you nights are the longest.

Paul and Paula – Hey Paula

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The real names of Paul and Paula are actually Ray Hildebrand and Jill Jackson, but their duo was named after the song. The melody and lyrics are simple, yet contain clever tricks that make it memorable. For example that repeated “Hey hey hey Paula” in the second line, an emphasis that is gentle yet creates a feeling of urgency, how “Paul” really has something important to say. Naming the characters Paul and Paula also creates a sense of unity, as if they’re almost the same person.

As such it represents a feeling that is common when a relationship is young, sometimes called limerence. It’s a feeling that you have found someone so special and complementary that you’re melding together. Some people find the emotion extremely distressing, because it also implies losing control and the sense of one’s boundaries. In fact, if one of the partners has a poor sense of boundaries it may feel like drowning or disappearing into the lover’s overwhelming presence. It’s one reason for fear of commitment, which manifests by creating distance to the object of love, constantly wanting someone, yet pushing them away.

But no such things here. Instead, we’re given a glimpse of a dream in which everything is resolved once people get married. In the song it’s a vision of people still at school, presumably high school, but often it’s people who are much older who find the song inspirational. It may be unrealistic to expect that life could be so simple: that there is this true love you find at school, then get marriage and share your life every day, and everything’s just swell forever. Yet growing older I’ve learned that unrealistic dreams are important. They’re visions that make us strive toward a future that wouldn’t be possible at all without the dream. No, everything will not go as planned, such is life, but without the dream things could be much worse.

The simple message may thus seem superficial, but I don’t believe cynicism would be any more profound. It’s just a different viewpoint in which such daydreams are given little significance. The claim of superficiality is rather based on the assumption that people aren’t rooted in reality, that they let fluffy dreams dictate everything they see. But that’s not self evident. Daring to dream of happiness can be a choice, it’s not a sign that one is incapable of other kinds of thoughts.

There’s also certain charm in the song not beating around the bush. We get straight to the point in the verse, whereas most songs defer the enunciation of the main idea until the chorus. This kind of song structure declined in popularity in the early 60s. It has a clear A and B section, but it’s not obvious whether there’s a chorus at all. The message and main desire is commitment, and it’s hard to find a modern song that would extol marriage as the highest desire.

I’m reminded of another song that also was a no. 1 hit in 1963: I Want to Hold Your Hand by The Beatles. On the surface it sounds just as innocent, but comparing these two songs, how they’re sung and how the argument is presented, it becomes obvious that The Beatles is a lot raunchier. They’re singing: “I think you’ll understand when I say that something: I want to hold your hand”. I don’t know how the contemporaries heard it, but to me it sounds like: “You must understand that holding hands is just a veiled reference for sex”. It’s so suggestive that it’s no wonder people had extreme reactions to it. And also it’s a part of the change in pop music, how first the veiled references were presented as the highest point of human experience, and then later some sexual act itself.

What’s fascinating about the age of innocence in pop music is that there was so much extolling of holding hands and slight kisses on the cheek, and the rest of it was just implication, so depending on your age and mindset you can interpret it however you like. It also would have been an age of censorship. But a song about marriage is undoubtedly wholesome although it also implies sex. It’s almost like sex is not mentioned, not because it would be wrong to sing about it, but because it’s a small thing compared to the feeling of unity that this song praises. It’s such a rare topic in today’s pop music that it feels almost rebellious despite being conservative.