you and i, we're two of a kind

just another (video) ~ pete yorn

"i love to wear my work inside of my head,
i can’t complain,
but you should never react the way you did,
i feel your time.

you were lying wide awake in the garden,
trying to get over your stardom,
and i could never see you depart us
and you’re my baby…"

one of my all-time favorite songwriters is leonard cohen, if not my very most favorite ever. those who know me well know what his songs mean to me, and how particular songs of his have become interwoven into the very fabric of who i am. i know for certain that his music and lyrics, especially his lyrics, have fastened themselves so deeply into my soul that they filter and flutter out into the way i write, the stories i craft, and even in the way i express things such as love, loss, and wishes.

yorn wrote this song after hearing jeff buckley's cover of leonard cohen's song 'hallelujah', and was inspired to craft one of my favorite songs of his, just another. you can hear it in the first guitar chord strums, but you can also feel it in the meanings between the words, and in the way the melody and verse weave in and out of each other. the stories behind the songs, the muses and landscapes that move an artist, and the way the song becomes its own to the listener (my own stories to this song, they evolve, they flow, and definitely exist) are some of the reasons music means so much to me.

all of it fits back into my long-held belief that art begets art, and that music is the oxygen to nearly everything we create. i know, for me, everything i write has music infused and intertwined in every word and phrase. music is forever my muse, my solace, and my inspiration. i know it seeps into the way i feel, the way i love, the way i let go, and the way i express everything.

and this morning, for many reasons, this song...well it feels like everything to me.

love is not a victory march

i heard this song in the car this morning, driving into the morning sun, and sipping from my still too hot coffee. and the tears started. leave it to leonard cohen's words to always bring me to tears. it just happens, and i usually can't pinpoint the reason, or the actual memory the song loosens, and pushes out of me. i just wind up in tears. it happens, it just happens, everytime, with this song. it is usually these lines that do me in:

"love is not a victory march

it's a cold and it's a broken hallelujah.
hallelujah, hallelujah

hallelujah, hallelujah

there was a time you let me know

what's real and going on below

but now you never show it to me, do you?

i remember when i moved in you,

the holy dark was moving too

and every breath we drew was hallelujah"

hallelujah ~ rufus wainwright

book of longing

ah. that.

that's what i was so disturbed

about this morning:

my desire has come back, and i want you again.

i was doing fine,

i was above it all.

the boys and girls were beautiful

and i was an old man, loving everyone.

and now i want you again,

i want your absolute attention,

your underwear rolled down in a hurry

still hanging on one foot,

and nothing on my mind

but to be inside

the only place

that has

no inside,

and no outside.

book of longing ~ leonard cohen

blue songs on a grey day

something about hearing an abba song first thing in the morning makes me inexplicably happy, as does bob dylan following it with it's all over now, baby blue. sometimes the shuffle feature, and a cup of coffee, is enough to get me by. bob is singing tangled up in blue now. this is one of those songs that hits deep beneath the surface, a story that is not mine, but still resonates somehow. i would put it up there with famous blue raincoat as my storytelling musical favorites.

i would love to pen a story about jane. perhaps she met up with bob on the road, or in the topless bar; perhaps he wore a raincoat and gave her a rose before he left her that rainy morning. the rose, she pressed it between the pages of a well-worn copy of on the road, the one she tucked in every bag she took with her everywhere. it has a hole at the bottom, a seam that tore open on a bus up the coast, she patched it up with crimson thread.

now i wonder if there is a blue theme to my day. the sky outside the office window looks grey and overcast, one of those mornings that seem so bleak, but that everyone assures each other will burn off by the afternoon. i just sorted a playlist by the word blue. do you ever do that? pick a word and see what it brings? the blue songs bring to mind blue characters, blue from desert blue, blue from old school and how that became my younger brother's nickname when he went to university because he was older than his roommates. perhaps jane goes by the name azure when she dances at the topless place, a connection back to that blue raincoat, the last glimpse of him that she caught as the bus pulled away.

and this, my friends, is how my mind works.

it's all over now, baby blue ~ bob dylan