I wrote my first song when I was thirteen, a short piano piece of no very great interest, dedicated to my piano teacher, who was extremely hot. It was kind of a rip-off of Beethoven's Für Elize, so I inserted her name instead of Elize and it got chosen to conclude a piano recital, which was supposedly something of an honor. Not an entirely deserved honor, I might add; there were at least two other pianists who were clearly better than I. Such is the power of love songs.
Since then I'd say that about half the songs I've written are about love in one way or another. But since I started adding lyrics, none - at least none that was addressed to a specific girl - has met with anything like the same approval from its subject.
The truth is, once I started going out with flesh and blood girls, I discovered that love was not the state of uninterrupted bliss I'd imagined. I was horrified to learn that girls actually do care if you give them flowers, that they really do give a damn about clothes, that they have hormonal mood swings unlike anything I could have pictured. [Editor's Note: I had no sisters, only brothers, and before I got to high school, I had only attended schools for boys - girls were things I read about in biology textbooks.]
Now mind you; this wasn't all bad. I was actually kind of glad to run into so many surprises, even if I didn't like all of them (and I did like many of them - for instance, I discovered girls were far better readers, better conversationalists, possessed a delicacy of feeling that I learned a lot from, and a sense of mischievous playfulness that I soon came to realize signaled trust, and which I found bewitching), and of course their anatomical mysteries occupied, realistically, about every third thought that ran through my brain.
And yet, where boys might be oafish or violent, I was surprised by the cruelty of girls. I got into two fistfights during that time with other boys (very unwillingly), the only two I've ever been in. One was with a kid who fancied himself a karate master and unexpectedly decided to demonstrate his skills on me, and one was with a kid who mistakenly thought I'd punched him from behind in a crowd. A stitched lip, a black eye, and from the instant it ended, we were friends for life (I still keep in contact with both of them). If two girls got into a fight? Well, there wouldn't be any punching. It would just become a matter of spending every single waking moment until one of them died trying by whatever means possible to destroy each other's lives completely. Fights made boys into best friends; they made girls into Siamese fighting fish.
I still can't pretend to understand the female mind fully, but my impression is that in romantic matters, guys tend to be rather open books, and if they keep a secret or two, it's usually something less interesting than they realize, whereas girls (again; these are simply my own impressions) seem to be darting in and out of concealed realms, choosing at every moment what they'll hide or disclose.
Well, enough of my half-baked ramblings. The point is that no love song worth the name is or should ever be unalloyed, worshipful adoration. Screw that. I've had five serious girlfriends since I started writing songs, and not one of them has ever been happy with a love song I wrote about them - which disappoints me. Like I said, women tend to have a richer literary sensibility, to my experience, than men, but having eventually grasped that treacle like, say, "I Just Called to Say I Love You" is what they prefer to be told, I learned long ago simply not to tell them which songs are about them. I believe this is what Kafka meant when he said "Written kisses never arrive at their destination; the ghosts drink them up along the way."
My Trusted MOGs
I wrote a love song for a girl for her birthday. Did it work? We've been together 35 years.
My Trusted MOGs
Brilliant post.
I've written I think exactly one song for my wife, and it's for her and my child, not just her alone.
However, I've written songs for complete strangers, or girls I've known on the periphery.
I think the pressure of writing for my wife (and even when she was my girlfriend & then fiancee) is just too much. Or I want to write without the words being forced.
But I really like your writing about this. :)
My Trusted MOGs
Nice insight. When I hear Brian Wilson and Prince singing those amazingly simple and very open love songs, I always wonder what the object of the song must be thinking. Now I'm closer to knowing.
My Trusted MOGs
derm: I didn't know you were a songwriter! I'd be very curious to hear some of your stuff, if it's recorded, or even just read some lyrics.
Sam: I am sincerely touched by your kind words, and thank you humbly. Love is such a marvelous subject, isn't it? I've never really written a song about my kid, in large part because in her case I actually do feel the kind of "unalloyed, worshipful adoration" that just isn't that interesting to hear someone else describe (and is completely unlike romantic love).
Jonh: There are two rather amusing personal anecdotes I'd like to share with you - one about being the subject of a love song (well, not "song," technically, but that's part of the story), and another related to your recent post concerning the demise of the record industry - which would best not be told in a public forum (nothing tactless or vulgar, mind you; they're just best kept discreet, even with the involved parties' identities concealed). May I rely on your confidence?
As an addendum, by the way, let me mention that I described the "kid who fancied himself a karate master" too briefly, and made him sound like a jerk, which he wasn't then and isn't now. He actually did know karate, and he was showing the guys how he could do a roundhouse kick right over the top of someone's head. Mine, in this unfortunate instance. Apparently, his new jeans took something off his range, and he got me square in the ear. Guilt-stricken, he absolutely demanded that I hit him back, and would not accept my forgiveness until I'd done so. Weird scene. Maybe I shouldn't have counted it as a "fight"...
My Trusted MOGs
Zarpex - Confidence assured - send me an email.
My Trusted MOGs
Yours is one the wittiest account of man's tentative exploration of women's psyche... Whatever one may think about gender specific metaphysics, one cannot deny the quasi impossibility of an "neutral" observation as it almost impossible to forget about male and female.
I think I've written a dozen of love poems... None of them was welcome by their instigators. (I like to think that it was because they were terribly bad because the muses were rather advanced).
If I may say one last word, love is like nausea: No one seems to know what it is really, but everyone feels it.
My Trusted MOGs
Bartleby! A poet, forsooth! I didn't know. I love calling the subject of a love poem its "instigator," although I must confess I'm not entirely clear what you mean by "the muses were rather advanced"...
My Trusted MOGs
Nice post, zarpex. If a woman was the subject of one of your songs she'd have to have been crazy not to have adored anything you'd written. But to quote from Kafka again, "God gives the nuts, but he does not crack them." ;)
Your title and the song reminded of this post: http://mog.com/dachmo/blog_post/135089
Cheers!
My Trusted MOGs
gmo: Thank you for your kind words, and your trust, which I hope I live up to. It took only a few moments' perusal of your mog to make it mutual.
Harold Bloom once remarked that although Kafka was deeply preoccupied with the concept of God (which is true), the word itself never appears once in all his writing (which is not). Bloom's gets away with feigning colossal erudition, but I still read and enjoy his stuff, because his opinions are usually dead-on.
My Trusted MOGs
I actually do feel the kind of "unalloyed, worshipful adoration" that just isn't that interesting to hear someone else describe (and is completely unlike romantic love).
See, it can be interesting to hear someone describe, if the person means it.
Not that I'd never mean it about my wife, but I think the emotion is more complex and has more history than my love for my kids. By nature, it has to be. :)
But yes, love...so many songs written about it, expressed so many different ways, and lots of fun. :)
My Trusted MOGs
Well, Sam, maybe that kind of love can be interesting if someone describes it well, but a big part of describing it well would, I think, be brevity. For my own part, most of my lyrics (especially those about romantic attachments) are an attempt to express my own befuddlement at the world, and in others', I tend to favor creative works, on the whole, that leave me guessing a bit. I always rather liked Too Much Joy's "Crush Story" on the subject of love:
??Everything you've ever said is brilliant Anything you want to do is fine with me This is much better than love This is a crush story??