Week 50! This is one of those songs where the suggested theme (from #songaweek2018) actually caused the song to be written. I wouldn’t have gone this direction at all if it weren’t for the suggested word, “metal.”
Not much I want to say about this song – I think we’ve all been here from time to time and know something about it. The cycle of love, the journey of living well. The bridge (“thieves break in and steal . . .”) comes from Matthew 6:19-20, that little passage about storing up treasures in heaven rather than earth. I interpret that not as sacred versus secular; but cosmic, big-hearted wisdom versus short-sighted, me-and-mine foolishness.
My heart’s made of metal
invincible steel
that’s why when you hold me
there’s nothing to feel
It’s a cold night in
It’s a lovely lost cause
I swam in the ocean
I crawled up on land
but there’s no harder journey
than the one to your hand
It’s a cold night in
It’s a lovely lost cause
Thieves break in and steal
Moth and rust corrupt
Come light your best fire
to melt me all down
I’m sick and I’m tired
But I’m coming around
Oh this was another hard week for songwriting. Getting a moment to myself, and getting that moment to align with a moment of inspiration, just didn’t really happen this week. I like the first line, I think the chorus has something I can work more with, but other than that, this was an exercise in getting things done. I wrote and recorded and submitted my 48th consecutive weekly song for #songaweek2018, and I’m content with that.
Where have the years gone honey, did you hide them in your heart?
Come here, let’s just see what we remember starting from the start
Lake breezes, apple blossoms and happy holidays
Summer nights and winter morning blankets holding in the blaze
Take each chance, children, that calls you to fly higher Seize each moment, ride that chariot of fire
Blue skies were never promised us but they keep showing up
Life may be full or empty but we’re never left without a cup
Once we tossed those rose-colored glasses we began to see the light
And all that we’d been missing from the deeper beauty of the night
So many miles we’ve gone, so many roads left to explore
So many songs we’ve sung, and waiting in the wings, so many more
I wasn’t consciously thinking about #MeToo or the conversations we’re having around consent in this cultural moment, but as this song took shape I can see its influence.
Just this morning I finished the last in a three-part Radiolab podcast called “In the No.” Which I did not enjoy but forced myself to listen to for my own good, like going to the dentist or cleaning the bathroom. In general I don’t like talking about sex or seeing/hearing it reenacted (all of which happens in this series, including both staged and real audio recordings of sexual encounters), let alone discussions of BDSM (a main topic of the last episode).
But I’m trying to parent two humans who mean more than anything to me, and this is their world. I won’t – and don’t – always understand, but I want to be engaged and informed.
Though there were important moments of insight and perspective throughout the series, all my discomfort in listening was worth it for the very last few minutes of episode three, starting at 24:35, when Michael Lissack, director of Empowering Victims, said this:
“Unfortunately, [consent] frames the entire question the wrong way. Consent means that you’re giving someone permission to do something to you. We don’t do sex to someone else. We have sex with someone else. . . It’s the wrong word.”
And the very last words of the series, from an unnamed woman discussing her current relationship:
“It’s so nice to have a partner that can read your body language and be like, this doesn’t feel right, are you okay?”
“Consent” is legal language and an obvious and irrefutable baseline. It’s unconscionable that it’s taken us this long as a society just to get to the point where this is an expectation for everyone, including men in positions of power.
But as a measure of a meaningful relationship, consent is much too low a bar. I want to know my partner, in every sense of the word. And I want my partner to know me, and to want to know me. This is what I hope and pray for my children too, as they grow into adulthood and seek out life partners, to love and be loved, body and soul, heart and mind.
Tell me all the things you think about honey
Tell me everything you know about love
Tell me all the jokes you think are funny
Tell me everything you know about love
I really wanna know
I really wanna know
I wanna know you
Tell me what scares you, what hurts and haunts you
Tell me everything you know about love
Tell me about the hands you couldn’t hold on to
Tell me everything you know about love
Tell me all the things you dream about baby
Tell me everything you know about love
Tell me what can make your legs get shaky
Tell me everything you know about love
“Regret” was the suggested theme for week 41 of #songaweek2018. I took it as a prompt instead of a theme this time. Possibly the thing that makes us best as humans is also what can bring us to our lowest point, and that is our need to love and be loved. But Bertrand Russell said “love is wise” (yes I did just mention this a few weeks ago – guess it’s worth repeating), and I agree. Although much of what we call love is not actually love, in our deepest and truest reaching out to one another, love does bring us wisdom. And so regret never comes from actual love. Pain, heartbreak, grief, yes, but not regret.
My mother has been preparing for a few years now to say goodbye to her mother Thelma, who we have been slowly losing to Alzheimer’s, and it’s looking like the final goodbye isn’t far away now. She’s my last living grandparent, and has always shown a special interest in my songwriting. Even as she began having trouble remembering people, when I would make my yearly trek across the country to see her, one of her first questions to me was inevitably, “are you still singing and writing?” The last time we were together she didn’t remember me, but she did sing with me, Amazing Grace.
This year I celebrated twenty years of marriage to Nathan. Anyone who’s been married this long (okay, anyone who’s been in a relationship with another human being for more than five minutes) will tell you it’s not all smooth sailing. I’ve learned over these years that there are inevitable valleys, where one of us will feel the need to approach the other and ask, “are you still with me?” Not because of any major issue, just a long gradual slide into autopilot I guess. And so even within long-term relationships, we hold out for love, and once in a while we lock on to it, and those times are worth the holding-out times.
This is some of the landscape in my head as I was writing this song. I had extra time to work on the recording, and decided to do a photo collage for the video. I included photos of each of my grandparents, cute kids and animals, and romantic love too.
Nobody has to tell us, we already know
The road to the heart of another is hard
Nobody has to show us, we just have to go
And come back alone and wiser
All of our lives we hold out for love Hold out for someone to hold on to And once in a while we lock on to love Hold on to someone who holds us too
Nobody stays forever, as everybody knows
The music we make with another must end
Nobody can prepare us to let a love song go
And come back alone and wiser
Nobody knows the reasons why everybody hurts
we wake in the darkness and can’t feel the light
nobody needs convincing that loneliness is worse
Than coming back alone and wiser
I like the word “souvenir.” I abhor gift shops, and am not one for keeping sentimental objects. But the sound and feel of the word itself delights me. It comes from French, which took it from Latin subvenire, meaning “to come to mind.”
It was the suggested theme word for week 32 of #songaweek2018, so I used it. I assembled a sad breakup song from some snapshots of my own personal experience mixed with imagination. (Don’t worry Mom, my marriage is good!)
I had a feeling it would come to this
That it wasn’t going to last
When I was dreaming of our future bliss
And you were pining for the past
And how you wouldn’t reach to take my hand
When I lay down with you at night
I had a feeling it would come to this
And now I’m sorry I was right.
I’m keeping no souvenirs
No souvenirs
From these bitter-sweetest years
You think we’ve gone as far as we can go
And now it’s time to take your leave
You think you’re better when you know you know
that you are unattached and free
I wish you all the life you’re searching for
I wish you’d search with me instead
You think we’ve gone as far as we can go
But I see so much road ahead
I’m keeping no souvenirs
No souvenirs
From these bitter-sweetest years
I’m not afraid to be alone again
I just don’t like to say goodbye
I know you’ll think about me now and then
I know I’m going to be fine
I know that love and light go with me now
I know there’s so much I don’t know
I’m not afraid to be alone again
I just don’t want to let you go
I’m keeping no souvenirs
No souvenirs
From these bitter-sweetest years
Julia Bloom 