Slow Dancing on the Edge of a Flame

Okay, people, bear with.  It's time for a story that has very little relevance to the song at hand.

Once upon a time, I was in high school.  I know.  Crazy.

And, in my tenth grade pre-calculus class, there was a guy who sat one seat up and one seat over from where I used to sit.  One shirt he wore more often than any other (and I notice things like that, even if I don't remember what he looked like), and it was from a concert of some artist or other; I think it may have been John Mayer (?).  On the back of the shirt (which was the only thing I saw, sitting behind him as I did) was a list of the artist's songs - one of which was "Slow Dancing in a Burning Room."  Ever since then, I have loved that phrase.  I've never actually cared enough to go look it up, or to look up the song itself, but I have always remembered it.  I guess it's sort of grown in my mind to a really amazing image and a really evocative song - and I don't even know if it is.  I just know that some part of the title to this song was inspired by that long-ago shirt.

(It wasn't that long ago.  Let's not go nuts.)

And here is the song.  More afterwards.

Slow- Dancing on the Edge of a Flame

whenever you cross my mind, I wonder if you know

my resolve not to fall for you goes up in smoke

like moths to a candle we draw each other in

we melt 'til I can't tell where we end or begin

and the embers, they fall onto subway tracks

and it feels like there's no going back

CHORUS:

and every time I see you it's always the same

it's like we're slow-dancing on the edge of a flame

you say, "we're just close enough to warm our hearts,"

but maybe one more step is a step too far

if playing with fire is such a dangerous thing,

why does it feel so damn good and exciting?

I touch your face and I want to fall deeper

like catching a firefly and wanting to keep her

so we go on and glow, for as long as we can

and I'll take it, when you offer your hand

CHORUS:

and every time I see you it's always the same

it's like we're slow-dancing on the edge of a flame

you say, "we're just close enough to warm our hearts,"

but maybe one more step is a step too far

still I don't, I don't care if you burn me

BRIDGE:

we might light up like fireworks, or turn into ashes

either way, it might be safer to break all the matches

still I don't, I don't care if you burn me

we were never going to shine eternally

CHORUS:

and every time I see you it's always the same

it's like we're slow-dancing on the edge of a flame

you say, "we're just close enough to warm our hearts,"

but maybe one more step is a step too far

still I don't, I don't care if you burn me

we were never going to shine eternally

no, I don't care if you burn me

we were never going to flame eternally... (end)

To me, this is a beautiful song.  I know that's self-serving and all, but I really like it.  I really like the concept, and the way the fire motif and imagery really carry through all the way (also notice how the chorus builds continually throughout the song, just as a fire/flame grows).  I hope it's not too much - just as with "Coda," the song/music imagery there.  I just really like the double meaning/possibility/connotation of the image, of slow dancing on the edge of a flame - it's kind of exciting and dangerous and thrilling and cautionary and bad and good all in one.  Flame can mean actual fire, of course, or it can mean love here, and I think that's what really makes this song work.  When it first crossed my mind, I meant it as the dangerous alternative, but I think what I love so much about it is that there's always the possibility that it's not that dangerous.  It's like being with someone you know isn't good but who does it all for you.

Also recall the line in "Less in Love" that was, "I guess I only held you like smoke."  There's that connection, too.  Which I actually put down on the paper on which I was writing this song, because I thought it was ever so clever.  My resolve not to fall for you goes up in smoke...

Oh, and I love the firefly line.  There's something so beautiful yet ephemeral about fireflies, and I thought that was perfect and significant in the context in which it was.  Oh, and also, the part about the embers falling onto subway tracks: that started as "the flowers, they fall onto subway tracks," and I really liked the sound of it (even though I realised, after that inspirational subway carried me home, that it had actually been my library card that fell on the subway tracks that day, out of the pocket of my coat, which was a very sad experience (I'd had it since I was seven)).  But it didn't fit into this song, even though I really wanted to keep the subway tracks (it's like a way out but a way in, too), so I'm thankful that the word "embers" occurred to me when it did, because it is kind of perfect.

The Glee tribute episode to Cory Monteith was kind of perfect, too.

Much love, and thank you for the musik,

Just Another Ordinary Girl

I can't decide if it's a choice, getting swept away.

And I hope that I don't fall in love with you.

Coda

So, you know what songs I have recently discovered, and love?  One is "Royals," by Lorde.  And another is "Dust to Dust," by The Civil Wars (who are this great duo on whom I've apparently been completely missing out).  Also, "Lips of An Angel," by Hinder (this made me cry, even though it's an uptempo Nickelback-type rock song), and "Try," by P!nk (good to listen to while working out - "just because it burns doesn't mean you're gonna die").  Lots of fun.

Oh, and I can't forget "High Noon (Do Not Forsake Me, Oh My Darlin')."  It's from the film High Noon, and won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1953 - and it's such a good song.  With or without the movie (even though the movie is pretty fantastic as well - Grace Kelly!).

I also recently discovered that the woman who sings "Colours of the Wind," from, yes, Pocahontas is actually the same woman (Judy Kuhn), who voiced Florence in the disastrous 1988 Broadway version of Chess!  My favourite musical!  (Even if not at all my favourite version!)  It was a "fan-girling" moment for me.

So, yeah.  Good times.

And we're moving on.

You know what a coda is, right?  It's mostly used in symphonic performances and classical music, when a piece seems to end and then the music swells once more and replays a few bars of the dominant melody, an echo to an earlier moment in the piece, and then ends after that.  (And yes, that is the technical definition.)  (Not really.)

So that's the image I was going for in the song - likening the relationship to a musical piece that had a little bit more left in it, a coda as the extra to their relationship.  As such, I wanted to excite as much musical imagery as I could, without seeming too over-the-top; I also occasionally balanced it out with natural imagery (there's a fire motif, for example).

This song all began with a single phrase: "blaze of fury."  A play on "blaze of glory," I think.  A line about cymbals followed, and I loved that for the way it really seems to capture the way things went down.  But aside from that.  I think I started this song in February or so, but it took a long while to fully form.  The chorus was the most difficult part, to formulate and to finalise.  Oh, I also like the bridge - it may be a bit wordy, but it also says a lot about the coda itself.  I think if you're in something that you know will be short-lived, you want to make it as pleasant as possible, so I let my protagonists not be weighed down by any concerns (or arguments, hence the "trying not to say," trying not to lay blame) other than the music around them - and when it's hard to say something, you let something else, anything else (a song, a Hallmark card) say it for you.  And it all tied nicely together with my musical theme, so I used it and I like it.

And then I also love "we were a chord that turned minor, somewhere along the way" - it's just such a succinct, imagery-laden way to express that things were good until they went bad and discordant.  Of course, the best word to use would have been "dyad," because there were only two people in the relationship*, but that's a little more of an obscure musical term and I wanted this to be approachable.

*Otherwise it would have been a bit crowded.  Ha.

The rest I will let you discover for yourself.

Coda

we went out in a blaze of fury
with the drama of a symphony, but with none of the thrill
like cymbals crashing wildly and then, suddenly, are still
and so it felt kind of bittersweet
when we were both here tonight, and between us passed a moment
that reignited all the things we must have been

CHORUS:
I thought this was over, our song played out
a beat of silence took too long, and built up a little rust
but like a melody that comes back around
we took a breath and realised we had one more week left in us
and this is our coda, our coda

somehow it was easy to break the pause,
going back to our old harmonies, and trying not to say,
we were a chord that turned minor, somewhere along the way
now our heartbeat's as loud as it ever was
and the notes stay the same, even if we don't follow the rules
because unlike before, we have nothing to lose

CHORUS:
I thought this was over, our song played out
a beat of silence took too long, and built up a little rust
but like a melody that comes back around
we took a breath and realised we had one more week left in us
and this is our coda, our coda

BRIDGE:
so we let the songs playing in the background say all the things we were feeling
and we let the songs playing all around fill up the time that we were stealing
we took advantage of the chance to rekindle what we had,
but all the same we always knew it still wouldn't last
so we played along the best we could until the echo faded,
until we went out in a blaze of fury all over again

CHORUS:
I thought this was over, our song played out
a beat of silence took too long, and built up a little rust
but like a melody that comes back around
we took a breath and realised we had one more week left in us
and that was our coda, our coda

I'm grateful that despite the dust,
we had one more week left in us
thank you for our coda, our coda...

Of course, I realise, now, that there is some kind of shifting of tenses going on there.  It felt natural to me as I was writing it, but if it's distracting (which it may or may not be) I should go and try to change it.  Let me know.

Much love, and thank you for the musik,

Just Another Ordinary Girl

I see clearer in the rearview mirror than I ever did looking out over the hood.

I guess we never really moved on.

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...