Tag: love

You may not believe this but

Published on by Grace4 Comments

I LOVE soggy, sad, sentimental, sugary, love songs. There are some that bring me to tears every time I hear them. I just tripped over a Neil Diamond song I had never heard before –

(and for those who can’t get Youtube videos to play in WordPress here is a direct link – https://youtu.be/bYsv2qa1BTc).

Of course there are the heart wrenching lost love love songs that also make me cry. Like

(Direct Link: https://youtu.be/gNDu75gEiIo)

“The Man That Got Away” written specifically for Judy Garland by Harold Arlen and Ira Gershwin, from the movie, the original movie, “A Star is Born”.  No one else can sing this song and any other iterations of this movie should be flushed down the toilet where they belong.

Torch songs, oh how I love them! They are the songs of lost loves, wrong loves and when song by the women who made them famous, they will rip your heart out.

So many love songs that make me sigh and cry – I could make a list as long as your arm (or my arm since I have long arms)…But I’ll leave you with this one – Damn I love to dance to this with my husband, the non-dancer –

(Link: https://youtu.be/mUowWUCNJtU)

My heart’s desire

Published on by Grace6 Comments

has always been to own a bookstore. I keep myself awake at night planning my shop. Where it will be; what it looks like outside; constantly rearranging the layout inside. I run over in my mind how to set up the legal end of owning a shop and accounting procedures;  how to source books; what kind of computer set-up I will need to track inventory, even what kind of payment I will accept and how to manage that. I worry about all the practical aspects of owning a shop.

The kind of books I will sell? That’s the easy part. I will only sell what I love, what I like. It will be a bookstore doomed to failure because of that. When love is the driving force then failure is a given.

You can’t make someone love something. Regardless of how truly fabulous and wonderful it might be. You can’t take your joy and pour it on someone and expect it to be absorbed, to become their joy.

Yesterday I needed to experience joy. So I started reading, again, for the 4th time, “The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry” by Gabrielle Zevin. This book is joy to me. This book is about love. This book is about the love of books. There is something about people who love books .  They are picky, opinionated but devoted and loyal to a fault when they love – be it books or people.

Rory asked in a post this morning “What is your favorite quote and why do you like it so much?”  How could anyone pick just one? If you are a reader then you have so many quotes that transported you, spoke to you on a deeply intimate level, raised you up, comforted you, challenged your perceptions.

If you have neither the time nor the inclination to read “The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry” then I offer you some of my favorite quotes from the book – share my joy.

“We aren’t the things we collect, acquire, read. We are, for as long as we are here, only love. The things we loved. The people we loved. And these, I think these really do live on.”

“The words you can’t find, you borrow. We read to know we’re not alone. We read because we are alone. We read and we are not alone. We are not alone.”

“My life is in these books. Read these and know my heart. We are not quite novels. We are not quite short stories. In the end we are collected works.”

Begins with – Today

Published on by Grace5 Comments

I was mentally composing a post, the title of which was going to be “Today” when, of course, a song came into my head.

Then a post that was going to be about weather turned into a post about music. Quelle surprise! as Holly Golightly would say. (Ah, Holly Golightly, that’s another story, remind me to tell you sometime.)
 

And then I had to look up which album the song came from – Surrealistic Pillow – Jefferson Airplane’s second album but the first with Grace Slick. I had this album and played it to death. It has my favorite Jefferson Airplane songs on it – Today, White Rabbit, Somebody to Love’, ‘My Best Friend’, ‘Comin’ Back to Me’ – that’s about half the album. 
Now here’s the thing – Jefferson Airplane put out many albums, including regrouping under the updated name of Jefferson Starship – but the only songs that stay in my heart and mind were the first ones I heard and loved. 
Then I thought to myself – “Are first loves the best loves? The most important loves? The strongest loves? The most enduring loves?”
I don’t have an answer for that – not in the realm of music anyway. Music first loves are so intimately twined into who we were at the time we first heard them. Perhaps even integral to our world view, our view of ourselves. They stay – always. 
There are ‘really, really like’ songs that we enjoy because, hey, they have a good beat and and I’ll give it an 80, Dick. But they don’t fall into the ‘love’ category because they just didn’t/don’t have that impact. (I think Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean is one of the top three dance songs of all time. I really, really like it but I don’t love it, doesn’t mean anything to me and I barely know the lyrics.)
Some artists are just so damn brilliant that they could sing the yellow pages and that would be my new song that I love. Billy Joel comes to mind. My latest favorite song that I love is And So it Goes. The song is from a 1989 album, I had never heard it, or can recall ever hearing it, until last week. I’m listening to it right now. It means something to me now, I’m not sure why. In 1989 it would have been more pertinent to my life  – maybe I didn’t hear it back then, maybe I was too wrapped up in my crazy life to make the connection.
Retrospect adds another layer to meaning, doesn’t it? 

“It always begins, or ends, with a song” I said in my last post. Should I end with a Billy Joel song that has a special meaning for me? No, but remind me to tell you that story. Instead, a song that just popped into my head – keep it in mind to play at my funeral – 

Published on by Grace

There is no such word as “loved” love has no past tense. If you ever stop loving someone then you never truly loved them in the first place. -Unknown~

“If ever there is a tomorrow when we’re not together.. there is something you must always remember. you are braver than you believe, stronger than you seem, and smarter than you think. but the most important thing is, even if we’re apart.. i’ll always be with you.” ~ Winnie the Pooh