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Midsummer heat, thunderstorms, gales. Open air concerts, dancing, drinking. Getting high, getting lost. Feeling low, unexpectedly finding someone. Summer holidays now here, and soon over.
The world is turning, and though in the north we’re past the solstice and nights are slowly but surely drawing in, testosterone is still rising in the masculine population, stimulated by the exposure to light since March. In the northern hemisphere this change in human hormones peaks in August, nine months before the peak arrival time of new humans. This primal need stimulates desire and with it, at least in the normal run of things, love.
Reminiscences about my various loves is not something that exercises me greatly. I like to live in the present, to move my hips, head and feet to a heavy funk bass, and this frees me from the terrible constraints of outdated human behaviours. Plus, of all the devices of fascism, nostalgia has a lingering jaded sweetness that often covers up the smells of death, brutality and oppression. So, a break from the sentimental is occasionally required with my summer morning armagnac.
Looking for a Definition of Love, I found these…
Love is illusion …but it controls the world (Samarthan Bidari)
as yes is to if, love is to yes (ee cummings)
That Love is all there is, Is all we know of Love (Emily Dickinson)
Love is the happy side of needing (Walden Mathews)
Love is when you need someone to be a part of your life, even when they are boring and dumb and rude, because you know they will again have one of those moments where they shine and that light is what you need to survive
A form of pair-bonding in humans similar to imprinting in lesser animals. Effects can persist for a long time despite the conspicuous absence of reward
“LOVE is when your with your love one an then meet your soulmate then give her the finger” (Anonymous)
Love is having to say you’re sorry every five minutes (John Lennon)
Love is a lousy tennis score
With some excellent exceptions these quotes come from the DIY Homespun School of Philosophy and Itinerant Intellectuals, and I noticed that there are very few song lyrics. Considering that the majority of timeless songs are almost entirely concerned with love, longing, and loss, these affairs seemingly a universal human experience, this is surprising. Especially when you are in that post-breakup, or straightforward rejection space (when ALL THE SONGS IN THE WORLD are singing to YOU) music is so often the landscape to our emotional journey. In love or out of it, music helps to define, celebrate, mourn and create love. It is unparalleled as both a vessel for emotional expression, and as its cause.
“Love is a stranger in an open car to tempt you in and drive you far away… Love love love is a dangerous drug: You have to receive it and you still can’t get enough of the stuff” (Eurythmics)
Modern recording and playback devices give us such ease of access to music that we too easily forget it’s power. Someone once wrote (may have been the great Sammy Cahn) this definition of success as a songwriter: you are old, forgotten, lying in your bed late at night, and in the street outside you hear the plaintive wail of a miserable drunk, staggering home to his empty bed. He’s singing the song you wrote years ago.
In 1955, Sammy wrote The Tender Trap, which aside from being era-defining, has a wry lyric about love:
Ya see a pair of laughing eyes,
And suddenly you’re sighing sighs.
You’re thinkin’ nothin’s wrong,
You string along, boy, then SNAP!
Those eyes, those sighs –
They’re part of the tender trap.You’re hand in hand beneath the trees,
And soon there’s music in the breeze.
You’re actin’ kind of smug
Until your heart just goes WHAP!
Those trees, that breeze –
They’re part of the tender trap.
To celebrate love in all its glorious forms, I made a list of the love songs I can recall from memory, and without internet search or other assistance listened to them all in the order they come to me. Here’s my top three, regardless of what I listen to most of the time these days.
Because I am a child of the 60s, Number 3 is 10CC’s “I’m not in love”. I always loved irony and denial, so much a part of love that people pretend otherwise. Nutshell: he is massively smitten, and sad about it = perfect teen angst.
Number 2 has to be Johnny Cash’s “A Thing Called Love” because my younger brother loved it, had the 7 inch single, and played it until we begged our mother to make him stop. Never forgotten, a wonderful, joyous song. Nutshell: Johnny Cash = all time genius.
Number 1 (for reasons I do not yet dare fathom) is “Love is the Sweetest Thing” by Ray Noble. Which is bizarre, because that song is about as funky as a dead vole. But the 1933 version I found has a great brass arrangement, big swelling crescendos, a lilting groove that gently swings and good old honest authenticity. The song expresses a truth. Aside from all the other things love brings, what can possibly be sweeter than love itself? Maybe they played it to me in my cot.
Nutshell: I am somehow into 1930s love songs, this being the perfect example.
Please feel free to add your own favourite love songs in the comments!
See you again soon.
Try a John Martin diversion one day. Superb writer and performer. Say him several times in the late 70's. Try: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ra_uv0uIY-g 'Could'nt Love You More'