Less in Love

I'm going to do a little something different with this one.  Switchin' it up, so to speak.  I'm going to have the song first, and then I'll talk about it afterwards.  I feel like that would make more sense, at least for this one.  I finished this sometime in early May (having gotten the idea in early April), and I really loved it then.  And, of course, still do.  It is, in many ways, my most finished and polished song, I think.  But I will let you be the judge of that.

So.  Catch you on the other side of,

Less in Love

you said, "I could stay forever this way,"

and that was maybe my favourite day

there was something so warm in your eyes, even though the sky outside was grey

oh, we made hot chocolate and we sat down on the floor

I told you how I'm scared of spiders and revolving doors

you laughed when I said changing lightbulbs must be easy for you

because you were the tallest man that I ever knew

and then you started whistling the song they were playing the night I met you

CHORUS:

but I don't think I'd go back, even if I could

because only bad things happen, to end something so good

and even as I picture us, it's becoming clearer to me

that I was ever less in love with you, than with the memories

we stayed all day in each other's arms,

and Christmas music played, even though it was March

then we turned on some movie, when staying awake got a little too hard

we talked over the film, because we knew it by heart

and watched each other's faces, at our favourite parts

and I might never have grown tired of you looking at me

because that made me everything I've always wanted to be

and you always kissed me on the forehead just as I was falling asleep

CHORUS:

but I don't think I'd go back, even if I could

because only bad things happen, to end something so good

and even as I picture us, it's becoming clearer to me

that I was ever less in love with you, than with the memories

BRIDGE:

I guess I only held you like smoke,

I read too much in your face

I must have been alone in forever,

because you threw us away

it was good, it was sweet,

we were doomed, you and me

I used to be afraid of losing you,

but I think somehow I've made it through

still it'll take some time for a spider not to send me screaming for you

for now I dance by myself, to songs only I know

and I don't have to worry about you stepping on my toes

if I'd been less in love, I could have been first to let go

instead of left stranded, out here in the cold

but if I keep playing it all back again, I can't ever be alone

CHORUS:

but I don't think I'd go back, even if I could

because only bad things happen, to end something so good

and even as I picture us, it's becoming clearer to me

that I was ever less in love with you, than with the memories

I was ever less in love with you, than with the memories

This song.  I love this song, as vain as it may be to say so, mostly because it has so many elements, but they all seem to fit well together.  The line, "that was maybe my favourite day," was the first to come to me - and I feel as though the word "maybe" makes it so much more profound than it would have been without it.  Then the first two lines of the chorus came, already attached to the melody I hear when I read this song back (sorry that you can't!).  The second of those lines, "because only bad things happen, to end something so good," was actually inspired by something one guy said on The Bachelorette one season.  (It's a habit, I can't stop myself watching it.)  This guy, Ben, who later became the next worst ever Bachelor, as he was leaving the Bachelorette upon getting turned down, said, "Good things don't end unless they end badly."  And I'll never forget it because I remember loving it at the time.  So, here, I sort of appropriated it for my own uses, in a paraphrase, and tried to imbue the line with the feeling that although the scenes from that maybe-favourite day were part of something good, she wouldn't go back because then she'd have to endure the something bad all over again.  And it was bad enough to overpower the good.  That's the point of the song.

The final two lines of the chorus came as one of the last things I wrote for the song (it was a strange scenario, where I was writing everything else but didn't know what the chorus would really feel like yet, what the title of the song was), and it came from something I saw online.  It's a picture that someone posted somewhere of a page in a book (?) that reads, "How do you know when it's over?  Maybe when you feel more in love with your memories than with the person standing in front of you." I wrote it down so I'd remember it verbatim, and because I was so in awe of it.  So that's the tone I wanted to convey, but of course I had to put my own slightly-convoluted spin on it.  I also was thinking about switching up one of the choruses and having the word "possibilities" take the place of "memories" - because being more in love with possibilities than with the actual person is probably also something that happens sometimes.  But then, it didn't feel right here, because the song is a tableau of memory, not of possibility.

I also love the spiders and revolving doors line.  Not actual spiders and revolving doors, to be sure.  But the line, and how it comes back up at the end.

I also think the trans-versal juxtaposition of being "stranded out here in the cold" with the "something so warm in your eyes, even though the sky outside was grey" is a nice one.  It was almost accidentally profound.

But yeah.  I think that's it.  The last three/four lines of the second verse kind of kill me because I find them to be so real and extraordinarily, delicately beautiful.

Thoughts?

Much love, and thank you for the musik,

Just Another Ordinary Girl

Photo album on the counter, your cheeks're turning red / you used to be a little kid with glasses in a twin-sized bed / your mother's telling stories about you on the T-ball team / you tell me 'bout your past, thinking your future was me / and I know it's long gone, and there was nothing else I could do / and I forget about you long enough, to forget why I needed to / but there we are again...