The Way

Winter comes and snow
I can't marry you, you know
Without you the winter grows
I can't marry you, you know

Love me the way i love you
Love me the way i love you

Take a year in your hands
You can find another man
Let your unloved parts get loved
I will be your man

Love me the way i love you
Love me the way i love you

Places you should be afraid
Into the river we will wade

Love me the way i love you
Love me the way i love you

"The Way" by Bonnie 'Prince' Billy

One of my greatest achievements in life is to have remained a virgin till my wedding day and to have married a virgin wife. Clears up a lot of the trouble of worrying whether you're the best the other person's ever had. One can't compare what one has to what one doesn't know; with that in mind I'm glad I only know one woman's body.

I'm not sure if in that second verse, the bolded one, Will Oldham is asking the implied you of the song to go sleep with another guy for a while and then come back or what. Sure seems that way. I don't think I could be down with that. I'm incredibly paranoid. I don't think I could handle being with a woman who'd been with other men to get what she couldn't get from me.

Maybe Will Oldham is such a down fella that he can admit his own failures to this extent. I don't know. If that's the way he loves then I can see why it'd be hard to love him back that way. Not that songwriters write music that literally describes them or anything. Not good ones anyway.

Maybe I should start avoiding that trap.

Let's Get Known

So hey, let's get known. If we keep it up, we can show the haters. It's gotta be soon, not later.

So begins the song Let's Get Known by the unbeatable Unicorns. Man, I wish I could write so honestly. When I try I just come off as a 14 year old brat trying to write shit poetry in his notebook before bed. Unfortunately I'm running right out of external problems to write about with any conviction.

Hmmm, how to draw the line between macro-generalized problems and the micro-specified mundane? Who knows.

Most of my favorite songs don't make a lick of sense. I can't even figure out what much of them means. Like Radiohead, Will Oldham, they leave out the full descriptions, but still provide such tedious details as to give vivid imagery.

Vivid images of who knows what. How do you write towards that?

I'm more worried that they don't even try and that the effort I use spells my failure with its very presence.

Silence as a Holster

Well, I ended up using those possible lyrics from an previous post and used a snappy title inspired by an even previouser (not a word) post. It came out in the form of a terrible recording in about twenty minutes. You can get the general idea here:

Silence as a Holster

Possible Lyrics

Silence can betray your thoughts

I know that you have things to say to me

Your words are claiming you don’t know

But all the things you’d convey

Are rolling down your cheeks

Pouring from your eyes

They’re pooling on your chin

Escaping in your sighs

Hurt my precious feelings

Call me rotten names

Scream aloud and cry and shout and

Make audacious claims

Just tell me what you’re thinking

For chrissake please say anything at all

Silence is no cover for

The brief moments [frustration] your anger gets your best

Deep inside your conscious

All those moments sit

Like throwing stones in fists

Swung but not released

Trapped inside your hands

Like idle threats they tease

Well toss them at me please

Hurt my precious feelings

Call me rotten names

Scream aloud and cry and shout and

Make audacious claims

Just tell me what you’re thinking

Just say something at all

Just tell me what my sorry ass

Can do to fix it all

Babies

Babies smile as I walk by

They do not cry

I wonder why

Maybe time will tell that I

Have a softer side

I’m really kind

Despite

What my actions right now prove

It must be something they learn in the womb

That we forget as we grow long in tooth

Ask the babies, maybe they know the truth

Judgment swings so far and wide

Inside my mind

I’m never right

Anymore I’m giving up

On trying to duck

The verdict of

My life

Is my attitude really all that bad

Do boys pick poor rolemodels over dads

Cuz children seem to like me as I am

It’s easy for their minds to understand

My actions are so childish too

It must be something they learn in the womb

That we forget as we grow long in tooth

Ask the babies, babies know the truth