For As Long As I Live

I always love this time of year, because it's Wimbledon - my very favourite tennis Grand Slam.  And this year's tournament certainly seems to be a cracker.

But of course, y'all don't come around here to read about sports (although if you did, I would welcome that, too - I'm willing and able to talk most sports).  So, on to the music.

I am currently nursing a profound affection for the lyricism of Ed Sheeran.  (Let me know if that link works, because I am surreptitiously typing this up at work and YouTube is, of course, blocked - as are, let me gripe a little, all of the best websites, including Goodreads and ESPN 360, so I can't watch the tennis.  Tragic, I know.)  His music is extraordinary, but I think even more than that are his lyrics.  So, so lovely and beautiful and meaningful, yet mostly so simple.  It doesn't take much to take my breath away, I'll admit, but songs like "Wake Me Up" (again, I hope the link works) really get me.  See I could do without a tan / on my left hand / where my fourth finger meets my knuckle...  Of course "Lego House," probably his most famous song, is also wonderful, but it's the other ones that I love most.  And you will never know, just how beautiful you are to me.  And it's not country, by the way, even if he is currently on tour with Taylor Swift (who, of course, is increasingly non-country herself).

If you do nothing else today, watch the video for "Lego House," hopefully hyperlinked above and here.  It is brilliant.  Especially if you're a Harry Potter fan.

Now I'm going to admit something to you.  Ready?  I wrote this song on a legal pad and the night I finished it (before I transcribed it into my song notebook), I slept with the pad under my pillow.  There is so much of me in the song that I hated to be parted from it so soon - but I was always that kid who slept with her notes under the pillow the night before a big test, so I guess that's also where that came from.

I guess it was also symbolic that night that I wrote it on a legal pad (even though I usually do), because it was the night that we celebrated my sister passing the Bar Exam (capitals necessary, for the test is a beast) and becoming, officially, a lawyer - or solicitor, if you will.  We were walking home from having drinks and appetizers from the restaurant where my mother works as a chef and I let my dad and my sister (the two Esquires in the family) go on a little ahead while I lingered behind, just as my thoughts kept lingering upon a few phrases and lines, lines that then morphed into the pre-chorus and the bridge.

I would say it was a song that happened by accident, but I actually think that's the case with everything I write.

Also, there's kind of a sanctity about the song, I feel.  It's a promise, and a whispered bargain that almost takes the shape of vows.

And here it is.

For As Long As I Live

I know that it would take some kind of miracle for you to notice me
because you are one of a kind and I am nobody special
and getting you to somehow fall in love with me
will take nothing short of divine intervention

PRE-CHORUS
I'll be the first to admit it,
I know I'm not the prettiest
but there's one thing I can do
and that is to promise you
oh, I promise you

CHORUS:
that I...I can love you better, than anyone else in the world
and you...you won't ever have to turn to more than one girl
I won't ever upstage you,
I won't try too hard to change you
and I won't ever ask for anything more than you can give
because given the chance I will love you with all of my heart,
for as long as I live

and I know that you might think that with these words I'm just playing pretend
because you have no way of knowing everything I am inside
but I'm certain I can convince you I mean them
if you let me have just a minute of your time

PRE-CHORUS:
I'll be the first to admit it,
I know I'm not the prettiest
but there's one thing I can do
and that is to promise you
oh, I promise you

CHORUS:
that I...I can love you better, than anyone else in the world
and you...you won't ever have to turn to more than one girl
I won't ever upstage you,
I won't try too hard to change you
and I won't ever ask for anything more than you can give
because given the change I will love you with all of my heart,
for as long as I live

BRIDGE:
last night I had a dream that you were dreaming of me
one day that won't anymore be just a fantasy
and I will be ready
I hope you'll see me, standing out from the rest of the pack
of all the girls with the same colour hair as I used to have
before I dyed it black

PRE-CHORUS:
and I'll be the first to admit it,
I know that I'm not the prettiest
but there's one thing I can do
and that is to promise you
oh, I promise you, promise you

CHORUS:
that I...I can love you better, than anyone else in the world
and you...you won't ever have to turn to more than one girl
I won't ever upstage you,
I won't try too hard to change you
and I won't ever ask for anything more than you can give
because given the chance I will love you with all of my heart,
for as long as I live

oh, I will love you as much as your mother did,
for as long as I live...

The last lines of the chorus: "and I won't ever ask for anything more than you can give / because given the chance..." really get me, because it's like asking for nothing more than just a chance.  And beyond that, she won't ever ask for anything more.  It's really kind of poignant, and moving.  At least to me.  Also, the "I will love you..." makes it all so much more concrete, using present tense and not the conditional "I can love you" that did appear in an early draft before I vetoed it.  Like, the whole difference between American vows ("I do") and those in England ("I will").  Which I didn't even realise at the time, but is ever so fitting for this song.

Also, you should know that the "I...I" and "you...you" is indicative of a meandering "I" and "you," musically.  As in, it's not just the word and then quick, move onto the next one.  It ambles, in legato, through various notes before it continues on to the next word in the line.  You know what I mean?

Much love, and thank you for the musik,

Just Another Ordinary Girl

Oh, almost forgot:

So dim that spotlight, tell me things like, "I can't take my eyes off of you" / I'm no one special, just another wide-eyed girl, who's desperately in love with you.

And because I did actually forget and posted this earlier, I'll leave you with another one, courtesy of the aforementioned Ed Sheeran:

I've fallen for your eyes, but they don't know me yet.

Soon

Oh, hello.

Still here, are you?  Me, too.

I can't stay away, apparently.  Try as I might.

This is me, sheepishly testing the virtual waters of the blogosphere once more, after having made such a grand to-do about leaving six months ago.  But it seems as though I just can't quit you.  No matter if I'm alone out here.

Tell me, if a blog is posted online, and no one reads it, do the words included therein still matter?

I don't know.  Probably not.  But I think we're all just trying to be heard, to be understood as something more than what we appear to be, and so that's all I'm trying to do here, too. 

And maybe that's ridiculous, and maybe it's foolish.

But come on - this is me we're talking about.  Me, with my life that has been, up to now, an endless string of folly and contradiction.  But I think perhaps it has been these precise mesmerising follies that have prepared me for all of the paradoxes - mysterious and bizarre though they are - that make up the person I am.

I am the daughter of two immigrants to a new country - destined never to belong anywhere but where my heart decides to stay (and, apparently, Hogwarts doesn't count), and even then never quite fitting in or being accepted.  I am the younger sister of a brilliant mind - destined to follow footsteps and court comparison even as I try to forge my own way, both eager and frightened to do so.  I am the single creative product of a family of doctors and lawyers and businessmen - destined never to be wholly understood yet not thoroughly ostracised either, a limbo both necessary and unwelcome.  I am the girl whose dreams have never been deemed to be big enough, but who then isn't quite big enough for them, either.  I am the youngest child of parents who had two daughters - not anything they hadn't seen before, and forever saddled with the inexplicable guilt at not having been born a boy.

I am the girl who dances on the subway, or to the rhythm of a photocopier, and doesn't care who sees - but whose every step has been dogged with insecurity and a crippling self-consciousness.  I am profoundly lonely, but too afraid of being an imposition on someone to reach out to them.  I apologise too much, mostly because I am too shy to say much of anything else, and mostly because I imbue those words with meaning far beyond "I'm sorry."  I love flying in an airplane, but I hate leaving things, or people, behind - and I constantly travel with the idea that I have forgotten something.  I have experienced little, but imagined much - it is because I have been blessed with such an extreme, vivid imagination that I can consider myself to have lived, without ever having gone beyond the bubble wrap of over-protection.  I want little, and I expect even less - but I am always sensitive to the sensibilities of others, most times to the detriment of my own.

I fall in love the way they do in fairy tales (quickly, without reservations, and with "happily ever after" in mind), because I kind of think everyone would like to - and therefore think everyone will.  But I have also fallen in love with a boy who didn't care at all about me - and am still trying to explain why I was hoping he would remember my birthday (of course he didn't).  More recently, I have fallen in love with a man who doesn't really know me, but with whom, I like to imagine, I would make a great team, bringing much good into the world and making him happy, the way he deserves to be.

One of the greater ironies of my life is that I want nothing more than to be a mother, and if I became a wife today and a mother tomorrow I should like nothing better, but I have also (how does the Band Perry put it?) "never known the lovin' of a man" - the only one of my friends (small though that circle may be) to be that way.  Yes, I am naive - but not nearly as much as I let on...

And I've also been fortunate not to be blessed with the desire to be exceptional.  I don't sing (or if I do, it's in the shower and not particularly well), but I write songs.  I'm not really pretty, but I also don't wear make-up to "make up" for that fact (ha, ha, I know).  I like to bake, and to sew, and was probably born in the wrong century - seeing as I don't understand the world I am living in (and my sympathies rest with vestiges of bygone eras).  I am far too much a people-pleaser to ever be considered interesting - whether as party to conversation or as the topic of conversation.  I am quite content to assist others to shine, and rarely do I get jealous.  And if I ever do touch greatness, in any small way, it will decidedly be quite by accident.

So, with all of this in mind, you can see that I am mostly a paradox.

...I figured that, since I'm committing myself to re-entering the blogosphere (I do like that word), I would re-introduce myself as well.  It has been six years since I began posting, and who I am has changed over the course of them.

And I wonder if you've even read this far down in the post.  That must be the most space I've ever taken up in talking about myself on this blog.  I beg your forgiveness - and will now proceed.

To the song.

I will soon try to recreate the songs I've written in the past six months chronologically, as I ended up doing last summer (almost a year ago), but now I want to post one that is one of the newer ones.  It's not the most remarkable, I suppose, but it also does have some interesting moments.  My explanation beforehand will be rather sparse, I'm afraid, because it's all there in the song.  It's kind of about the apprehension and the nerves about seeing someone again, after breaking up, and it's about the butterflies that can be born from the "not knowing" what's going to happen during the meeting - butterflies that can be either nerves, or excitement, or dread.  And you can never exactly tell which.

Soon

when you called to tell me you're in town, and want to meet up, I half-expected you to say "just kidding"
but I've been feeling the same way, and I want to see you too, so I'm sure glad you didn't
still I'm wracking my brain, trying to figure out
how we're gonna find something to talk about
because I keep going back and forth between looking forward to seeing you, and completely dreading it

CHORUS:
if I knew what I wanted to say to you tomorrow,
I'd be asleep by now
if I knew what I wanted to hear from you, too,
I wouldn't still be awake
but I don't,
so I'm here,
tired and hopeless and lonely
and I'm still
thinking 'bout
just one thing only:
I get to see you
soon

now I'm not sure what I should wear, so that you think I'm over you, but that you still think I'm pretty
and I'm practising lines and things that should make you laugh, so that you still think I'm witty
still I don't really know what tomorrow has in store
so I'm trying to mix being me with having once been yours
and I don't have to tell you how strange it feels, because that's the way it never used to be

CHORUS:
if I knew what I wanted to say to you tomorrow,
I'd be asleep by now
if I knew what I wanted to hear from you, too,
I wouldn't still be awake
but I don't,
so I'm here,
tired and hopeless and lonely
and I'm still
thinking 'bout
just one thing only:
I get to see you
soon

(instrumental break)

when you called to tell me you're in town and want to meet up,
I half-expected you to say "just kidding"

(beat)

CHORUS:
if I knew what I wanted to say to you tomorrow,
I'd be asleep by now
if I knew what I wanted to hear from you, too,
I wouldn't still be awake
but I don't,
so I'm here,
tired and hopeless and lonely
and I'm still
thinking 'bout
just one thing only:
I get to see you
soon
I get to see you
soon

soon, soon, soon, soon
soon, soon, soon, soon
(etc. until fade out)

I broke up the chorus that much because of the way it formed in my head: kind of choppy and stream-of-consciousness.  Also, I know the rhyme of "pretty" and "witty" made even Leonard Bernstein cringe once, but hey - I'm no Leonard Bernstein.

Much love, and thank you for the musik,

Just Another Ordinary Girl

Tonight your memory, it burns like a fire / with every one it grows higher and higher...

I was playing back a thousand memories, baby, thinking 'bout everything we've been through / maybe I've been going back too much lately, to when time stood still and I had you.