'It made me think of you, it made me think of you...'
If only sometimes, we could do the thing we really wanted to do, recognised the moment for what it was - an opportunity, a flight path - used our wings instead of wishing for them.
Then we wouldn't be haunted by regret (and a fear of flying)
Let the sunshine carry you up, over, and beyond all that would try to keep you down.
Or - how a keen and sudden realisation is equal to wings; strength, resolve, independence, ~ freedom.
'I will not be a victim of romance, I will not be a victim of circumstance, or chance...'
But somehow, melancholy like this, is always softened through song. Yes, love sucks, losing in love sucks, but doesn't this song serve as a lullaby to it somehow? Doesn't it make it - better - somehow? It gets it. It understands. It listens to us, as we listen to it.
Notice how many songs there are that describe the feeling of being in love to being in the sun? The beloved to glorious sunshine?And love to the sun that brightens our days beautifully. So many! And, so true, the perfect comparison.
Here's a few of my favourites:
The highs of shiny summer love: ~ 'You shine like silver in the sunlight, you light up my cold heart...'
All sparkled awe at new love!: ~ 'I'm yours and suddenly you're mine and it's brighter than sunshine...'
The hesitant fear but over-riding happiness of going from dark to light - uncertainty, pain, longing to - love, sunny love: ~ 'I cross the shadow and step into your sun...'
This song is a strange one. With every listen, its meaning seems to morph and change.
With its upbeat tones, it seems optimistic. Accepting. Affirmative. Love will tear us apart, yep, but that's ok. We get it. That's the way things are meant to be. (~ Original version)
Then, at other times it seems more morbid. Sad. Fated to sorrow and not willing to fight it. Defeatist. Tragic. Doomed. (The cover version really brings this out)
Oh, the highs of sunny summer mornings, feeling free and easy, and the anticipation of the get-up-and-go the season has in store sounds something like this:
This is what possibility sounds like, flaring and sparking like fireworks on the horizon. Possibility - impossible to ignore, impossible to resist.
This song is shot through with adrenaline, rising hope and all the dizzying heady heights of what could be, what should be.
And how it's all down to us, to ourselves, to get up and go after what we want in this life, to light the spark of our own possibilities and follow through the flame - 'if we don't make it/ nothing changes'
You know those songs you hear playing at critical emotional climax moments in TV programmes - songs that accentuate the feelings in a particular scene, songs that seem to plant an amp beneath the emotions of the scene and blast their magnitude at you until you can feel it resonate with you so much your eardrums tingle and some complex feeling of your own - previously wordless, shapeless, soundless - suddenly shifts itself into a legible luminous clarity and you feel immersed, for that few seconds, in a personal epiphany of huge proportions?
Yeah? Well, here's one of them. Emotional extraordinaire, The Cary Brothers:
I love The Great Gatsby, one of my all-time favourite books.
I think this song from the Baz Luhrmann film, sums up the story best, captures all the conviction and hope that Gatsby had in his heart, which turned out to be all for nothing in the end, and thus, tragic.
A heart breaks worse the more hope it has it seems. That green light ~ a blessing and a curse.
It's ok to make mistakes. We're all learning. We're all trying. We're all hurting. We're all just going on our way. And it's good to question things. And it's okay to feel lost at times too.
Well, that's what this song seems to say anyway. And maybe something about realisation and acceptance too. And the universality of being an individual. And, getting free.
Sometimes, pain dilutes the world to a rainy day view. And things disintegrate so much, lose their meaning, their hold, that you begin to feel like you're disentegrating too.