Love Songs

I like music, some would say I am obsessive about it. I like all kinds of music too, rock and roll, blues, vintage country, jazz, new age, the list goes on. I own 600 compact disks and almost 10,000 MP3’s so one would think my collection well represents every genre and type of music there is. I also play guitar, just rhythm mind you, and some flat picking, a sprinkling of finger picking, but no blazing lead crescendos. I have a repertoire of a few dozen songs I can sing and play, adequately at least. I even managed to play in a band not long ago.

I very much enjoy playing my guitar and recently I have had the opportunity to serenade a special lady, my girlfriend, she smiles when I play my songs, she doesn’t criticize my left hand technique or my time keeping ability, she just tells me how good I am and of course I just humbly state that I can’t carry a tune in a bucket nor play the guitar well but I try. Still I love to play and sing for her, I am starting to get a “best of” list of tunes she enjoys hearing.

Most of what I play is of the roots rock variety, and some folk tunes. It occurs to me that nearly every song I know is sad. I recently learned a song from my collection by the Marshall Tucker Band, it is a classic rock staple, with easy chords, opportunities for emotive vocals and some cool walk downs. I couldn’t wait to try it out on her last weekend. I started out with the finger picking at the beginning and then launched into the chorus with some verve. I wasn’t missing my chord changes much, and I had the lyrics in front of me when I realized this song was about a man that had been jilted by his lover and he wanted to “find a hole to crawl into” and “take a freight train to Georgia and never come back”. This is not a love song, and being just the opposite of a love song means it probably isn’t the best thing to serenade my lover with.

This problem extends to my massive music collection as well, oh sure with tens of thousands of songs to choose from, I should have hundreds of love songs to listen to, at a minimum. However I do not, I have trouble finding a good love song in my collection. See, when we are apart I want to listen to something that will remind me of her, I wish to hear a good tune with lyrics about happy love, and blissful nights in each others arms, or winsome expressions of longing and desire. Instead I have a giant collection of songs that when the subject is love, are morbidly concerned with broken hearts, cheating lovers, unrequited love and loss.

I understand that I never noticed because all those negative things comprise what my experience has been for the most part up till now. My head just isn’t there any longer. Even the drinking songs sound hollow today, because I am not lonely, I don’t drink to kill any pain, I am not spending nights alone.

For most of my life I have regarded love songs as smarmy, sweet and a bit self indulgent. They lacked realism, in my world love always ended in some bad heartbreak or at best ended in apathy and nothingness. In my world, love usually meant I was going to get hurt, and spend a lot of time drinking and listening to music about some pathetic character in the same mental hell I was in.

So as I embark on this new relationship, as I have surrendered my heart to this remarkable woman, I seek love songs, and I will find them. The new soundtrack to my life will be a happier one, and I will save the other stuff for the audiences that want to hear it, there are plenty of them out there, but today I am not one of them.