The Love You Take

Spring is growing on me

“I never give you my pillow,
I only send you my invitations
And in the middle of the celebrations,
I break down

Boy you’re gonna carry that weight,
carry that weight for a long time
Boy you’re gonna carry that weight,
carry that weight for a long time

Oh yeah, all right,
are you gonna be in my dreams tonight?”

— The Beatles, “Golden Slumbers/Carry that Weight/The End”

I don’t celebrate springtime.

Unlike October, which just makes me uneasy with days getting shorter and sounds and sights not always matching up, springtime does not give me time to think too long about depression, or anything else for that matter. It makes me jumpy. Like almost every town or precinct with a weathervane, springtime is the most unpredictable season. Where I live, in the Pacific Northwest, it was a sweltering 81 degrees, which may not sound too hot depending on where you live, but it is plenty hot by our normal standards. A week ago, I had to wear a fleece vest when I went into the garage. Today was one of those days when heat had a color, a hazy beige which dulls depth perception and tints everything that isn’t moving. Just watching the kids and their parents walking home through that haze after school today made me cough.

Clouds began to swirl around my head tonight, hinting at rain later this week. Maybe rain will clear out the musty air.

Predictably, it is supposed to drop 25 degrees by the weekend.

Spring, as a rule, is unpredictable.

Though i am dark ‘bout the whys of wanting
Though i am dark, i’m still a child
Gonna dig a coal mine, climb down deep inside
Where my shadow’s got one place to go
One place to hide…”

— Laura Veirs, “Shadow Blues”

There are certainly things that are more boring than reading the same guy writing about the same things, referencing the same songs night after night.

I am actually counting on there being LOTS of boring things, or at least more boring than reading my stuff out there.

I conducted an insanely short straw poll (there were two people in the poll) of songs other people listen to which might motivate them. There was no limitation to the songs. It could have been anything. Didn’t even have to have lyrics (although that helps).

“There’s a shadow beneath the sea
There’s a shadow between you and me
I’ve learned that love is scared of light
Thousand seeds from a flower
Blowing through the night”

— “Shadow Blues”

Light, hope…feeling. That is what I gathered from this survey. These are the three characteristics that make a song worth listening to more than once in a row.

Light and hope, I am still working on, but I completely get feeling. I am guessing Bruce Springsteen did not forcefully imagine some wordy, average-height wanna-be writer in Seattle with large feet listening to “Jungleland” every day – literally every day – for years. Well…Springsteen might have, but he would be the exception.

If a song makes you feel, there ain’t any turning back. The die is cast. You like what you like.

Hey, David Gates made it into my playlist one night and took up permanent residence. I gave up awhile ago trying to resist “Goodbye Girl.” Not exactly the most predictable slot on the playlist, but one that earned its keep.

David frickin’ Gates.

“There’s a light in your platoon
I’ve never seen a light move
Like yours can do to me
So now I’m wishing
For my best impression
Of my best Angie Dickinson
But now I’ve got to worry
‘Cause, boy, you still look pretty
To me but I’ve got a place to go
I’ve got a ticket to your late show”

— Tori Amos, “Putting the Damage On”

There are a lot of things going in those second and third songs tonight, but music always has been a great shroud, expressing feelings and emotions when you (or me) feel a little too constrained to say everything out loud. Spring is the time for hope and rebirth – even if I am a skeptic. Enough people invest in this season that it is worth paying attention. Laura Veirs is a new name to me, but I loved “Shadow Blues” because “thousand seeds of a flower” might be my favorite phrase of the year so far.

Tori Amos has always seemed pretty cool to me, but I never dove into her catalogue much. I still have not done her justice, but including Angie Dickinson into “Putting the Damage On” solidifies her cool bona fides. You have to look hard, but she is talking about wistful romantic feelings that she can see…and maybe no one else. That verse above is almost a challenge to the person on the other end of the conversation: You may try to push me away or aside, but “I’ve got a ticket to your late show.” Some people and relationships are resilient beyond all rational explanation. A tether rope is an analogy I have used before, and I will almost assuredly use again.

Spring is also the time for weddings, proposals, light, and romance. For those jobs around the house that need to be fixed, Spring is that season. You may see something that brings you up short; makes you think, “Huh, I never thought of things like that before…”

“The man in me will do nearly any task
And as for compensation, there’s little he would ask
Take a woman like you
To get through to the man in me

Storm clouds are raging all around my door
I th ink to myself I might not take it anymore
Take a woman like your kind
To find the man in me”

— Bob Dylan, “The Man in Me”

Part of me is a cynic…a HUGE part of me is a cynic…but part of me is also a romantic, albeit also one who thinks Bob Dylan is a great balladeer (this is factually true, not just one man’s opinion). Dylan is sort of problematic because you can never tell for sure if he was just snarking his way through “The Man in Me” or “Where Are You Tonight? (Journey Through Dark Heat.” I trust that at least half of Dylan’s “ballads” are legit. It does not even matter that much because people will read their own interpretations of his lyrics. The guy toured through Europe with people throwing garbage at him because he went electric. He does not care what you think. He said to Robbie Robertson after one of those first shows, “Man, that was great!”

“Subway’s no way for a good man to go down
Rich man can ride, and the hobo, he can drown
And I thank the Lord for the people I have found
I thank the Lord for the people I have found”

— Elton John, “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters”

I am also a bit of a sucker for Bernie Taupin and Elton John. It is easy to caricature Elton John and dismiss his work as fluff. He was not a punk; he was not a rebel; he wore weird hats and dumb sunglasses. I think, at some point, he leaned into the caricature and decided “screw it, I know who I am,” and went with it.

Paired with Bernie Taupin, though, and their collaboration in the early 1970’s produced some great sneaky-dark lyrics folded into their romantic flights of fancy, “Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters” being the best example.

There were decades when I thought The Beatles were overrated, not nearly as cool as the Stones, not as interesting as Pete Townshend, and The Band was a superior musical ensemble.

I was sorta wrong and sorta right. Paul McCartney has stood the tests of time and is the greatest rock ‘n roller alive…and probably will be ten years after he dies.

But The Beatles continue to do things today, 56 years after they broke up (and with two members already passed), that force people to think and feel. That is astounding. And McCartney wrote and performed some of the best love songs in history.

The best thing about ALL these songs is millions of people hear something slightly different in each verse, and it gives a fully formed love song, not necessarily with all happy endings, but not sad ones either.

A bad song -- especially a love song – is one where you do not care about anyone in the song. As hard as it is to write a song – any song – it is harder to write a song where you end up caring about the people in it, not the first, second or third time you hear it, but the 17,122^nd time you have heard it.

Paul McCartney is the best at it.

And in the end, the love you take,
is equal to the love, you make

— “The End”

Richard Dreyfuss still got Marsha Mason in the end. (yes, the link to the song is included again)