Winter Song

This is one of those entries you're just going to have to dig into to get to the point. My faithful readers know that I post everything I write... even the crap. So just go with me through the beginning. I promise there's a payoff.

I can’t stand silence. I find it particularly disarming when I’m trying to work. Not everyone can be productive surrounded by “noise.” I’m just the opposite. When I’m stressed out and behind, it’s classic 70s. I don’t know why. When I feel like I have a ton to do and it’s really just a matter of racing through it, it’s all 80s New Wave all the time!

As a rule, I’m great with lyrics. I can’t tell you who sings what song, but I can recite verse after verse for no apparent reason other than I think it just finds it’s way into my memory while I work.

Today I was feeling a bit frustrated. There was new information for a project that I couldn’t make complete sense of because I was missing the “historicals;” the things that happened pre-me and none of my usual music was helping me concentrate.

I read and reread the new documentation, put together a synopsis and yet, I felt I was still missing some critical point. How could I possibly not be “getting” this? After all, it's not like I'm saving lives or creating new ways to keep us "Green." It occurred to me that maybe what I was truly lacking was the right musical inspiration.

I browsed about until I found a new streaming station… at least new to me. I don’t know what it was exactly; some light new alternative – none of the songs had I ever heard. Perfect. Just the kind of white noise that would keep me focused.

I went back to work gathering my questions and putting together an email to get the information I was missing. As I read through the missive to ensure I had everything I needed, a snippet of a song crept into my head. I stopped working. What was I hearing??? What was she singing???

“Is love alive”?

“Is love a lie”?

Well! These are two very different questions! I actually said that out loud to an empty room. Interesting questions though, don’t you think?

I often wonder if love – the kind of love of books and movies – really is dead. Or worse, perhaps it never existed at all. I think we all want to believe in it, and maybe that’s why there’s so much theater and so many romance books focused on it. It’s something we really, really want… and sadly it might not even exist outside of our own imagination. So maybe it is a lie.

Maybe love is nothing more than the thing we make our relationships into in order to create a sense of importance; to give our lives meaning and reason in a Universe that is so often unreasonable.

Could it be that societal expectations are such that, in an effort to bring more meaning into our lives, we make choices about all of our relationships to rationalize what we know to be – or not to be – true so as to somehow elevate ourselves to a place where we can excuse or create our perceived behaviors of others?

Is love alive?

Is love a lie?

I’d like to believe in the first. It’s infinitely more painful to look at straight in the eye. But life is painful. It’s also joyful and ridiculous and luckily, its events are generally unexpected.

What I heard was Winter Song by Sara Bareilles. You decide…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67xr_KKPTHE