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Saturday, February 13, 2010
THE GRIP OF LOVE
Tom Verlaine
Tom Verlaine
Elektra : 1979
[Buy It]
Over the years, here at Moistworks, we've considered love in all its forms, at least as seen through the prism of the pop song. This year, we are standing down. Our weapons are holstered. Orders from above: the topic has been deemed too tragicomic. We got a note that explained the orders, from above. The note read, in part, "Give it a rest. If you see it out and about, arrest it. If you see something about it, give it back." The note had tears on letters like magnification and torn sides like amplification. But it's Valentine's Day, and we have a responsibility, so we're reposting last year's entry. Happy Unhurt Heart.
Why are people so quick to love movies, books, songs, paintings, restaurants, and sports teams but so slow to love other people? Sages have been debating this issue for centuries, and continue to the present day. Bill Sage, a kid I went to high school with, used to talk about the girl he was dating, how she was a hot girl who was smart or maybe a smart girl who was hot. "Maybe she's the overlap," he said. "I love the idea of the overlap." But he never loved her, and she found that out a few years later in college, and promptly slept with someone else. It wasn't me, but I knew the guy, and after she got rid of him, too, we became friends. Now she's living in a western state, where she works for a company that helps other companies manage inventory. I spoke to her not so long ago, and she said that her personal life was frustrating, not exactly loveless but not exactly love-filled. Work, on the other hand, was rewarding. "You wouldn't think it," she said, "but I like the purely logistical issues. For example, in most companies, sending things out of the warehouse is a relatively trivial matter compared to bringing things into the warehouse." She went on to explain that since no system is perfect, especially when so many moving parts are involved, a certain amount of management is management of inevitable errors in counting, logging, and ordering. "You have to be precise about imprecision," she said.
I digress. Or rather, she digresses. Or does she, and do I? Bob Sage, Bill's brother, used to say that it was easy to love people so long as they didn't look at you, and we would laugh at him, because he was always making these kinds of jokes, but it's entirely possible that he wasn't joking at all. People are quick to love movies, books, songs, paintings, restaurants, and sports because those things don't love back--or rather, can't love back. There is no expectation of reciprocation and consequently never any disappointment when reciprocation falls short. Each and every time you listen to "Your Pretty Face is Going to Hell," say, it produces the same experience for you. If the experience is different, you will quickly understand that the shift has occurred within you rather than within the work. And it's rare that love is withdrawn from a song or a book: you can come to see its flaws, or come to be embarrassed by your earlier ardor, but that might just make you drive your love deeper inside. It won't, for the most part, make you bring your love to a full stop.
Loving people, on the other hand, is a dangerous business, because love isn't just about what you feel. It's an economy in which what you feel must be matched with something of equivalent value, as well as one in which your expectations for ongoing supply can quickly reach self-annihilating levels. Not to mention the fact that you may feel you are not equipped to handle what you are receiving: expectations from another person that are as interdependent and volatile as yours. Love, or whatever you want to call it (pick a less romantic word if you'd prefer) is a frightening prospect. When you accept it, you are assuming risk at a level that often overloads the human organism. Two people acting with single purpose but retaining their separateness? That's an overlap, and nobody likes--let alone loves--the idea of the overlap. Giving love refines the spirit; worrying about getting it clouds and clots that same spirit. Or, to reinvest the digression, sending out of the warehouse is a relatively trivial matter compared to bringing things into the warehouse.
This may be obvious, but it's Valentine's Day, the commemoration of the obvious. My friend in the western state who manages warehouse inventory recently went through a breakup. I think maybe she was trying to hold on until Valentine's Day, but that became untenable for several reasons, some of which I have listed above. The person she was seeing was not a movie or a book or a painting, and so, in trying to love him, she quickly found herself concerned with trying to accept his love, which led to expectations he could not satisfy. These were not unreasonable expectations, not as far as I was concerned -- and, sometimes, not as far as she was concerned. They mostly involved him offering to drive her to work some mornings, or offering to pick her up some afternoons, or leaving little notes in her jacket pockets, or calling in the afternoon and assuming a funny accent to ask if she knew where he might find the "best little wharehouse in the state." Whatever. The specifics aren't important, not to me. The point is that all the things she admired about him statically, all the things that would have worked to his advantage if he was a TV show or a sculpture, dissipated when he couldn't -- or wouldn't -- understand the issues of inventory management. She was able to give him love, for a time, but witnessed repeatedly how pained he was to give in return, and that returned her to a point where giving seemed more like someone else's taking.
After the breakup, she said, she thought often about whether she had give him enough chances. "He made mistakes but so did I," she said. "Why should that be unacceptable?" This was a fair question with a fairly obvious answer. In love, or commitments, or relationships, you don't have to avoid error. In fact, you should embrace it. But you should embrace the proper type of error. This is another way in which static artworks are easier to love than people. As we have said, artworks don't change, really, so they can't disappoint you. But they also can't try to accommodate you and, in doing so, show you that they are utterly insensible about how to find your heart. My friend told me one story that stuck out like a stalactite. After the breakup, the guy came by her office. He took her to lunch. He ate a meal that he would never eat -- a big burger, she said, when he was mostly no-red-meat -- and asked questions he would never ask. "I know he was trying to be a different," she said, "but it only made me feel more the same. The root him and the root me didn't intertwine." It is easy to believe unverifiable things about a song or a book, but harder to do so about a person.
So for this unholy coming holiday, and for my friend, and for the guy, even -- who I never met and probably wouldn't have liked, at least from the description, but who has the same right to be happy as anyone else -- here's Tom Verlaine's "The Grip of Love," which not only contains some of the finest electric rock guitar of the last century (try it, you'll love it), but has a comprehensively elliptical lyric that says most of what I've been trying to say:You do the moon
You do the snake
Everywhere you go
You make the right mistake
You take a picture
And lay it on my tray
Some kind of window
Just like the Milky Way The song doesn't end well -- the girl tells him to get lost, and he says, desperately but slyly, "Well, don't that buckle my belt?" -- but it starts beautifully, and that's something. Inventory is managed, at least for a little while, and it's managed exactly as he says it is, exactly as my friend said it is: "Everywhere you go you make the right mistake." So find that person, get in the grip, do the moon, do the snake. Happy Valentine's Day.Labels: ben, love
posted by Ben
LINK |
Thursday, February 14, 2008
PLEASE SEND ME SOMEONE TO LOVE
Percy Mayfield
Specialty : 1950
Available on: Poet of the Blues
Specialty : 1990
[Buy It]
WILL YOU STILL LOVE ME TOMORROW
The Shirelles
Scepter : 1961
Available on: 25 All-Time Greatest Hits
Varese : 1999
[Buy It]
LOVE GOES TO BUILDING ON FIRE (DEMO)
The Talking Heads
CBS : 1975
CBS Demo Recordings
[Unreleased]
TEENAGER IN LOVE
The Wailers
Studio One : 1964
Available on: One Love: The Wailers at Studio One
Heartbeat : 1991
[Buy It]
HOW DO YOU SPELL LOVE?
Bobby Patterson
Paula : 1972
Available on: How Do You Spell Love? (The Paula Recordings 1971-1973)
Jewel-Paula : 2002
[Buy It]
L-O-V-E
Leon Thomas
Blues and The Soulful Truth
RCA : 1972
[Buy It]
WHOLE LOTTA LOVE
Prince
Live at The Alladin in Vegas DVD
Hip-0 : 2003
 OLD GREGG/LOVE GAMES
LOVE GAMES (LIVE)
LOVE GAMES (LIVE ACOUSTIC)
Noel Fielding & Julian Barratt : The Mighty Boosh
CAN'T NOBODY LOVE YOU
Solomon Burke
Atlantic : 1966
Available on: Home In Your Heart
Atlantic : 1992
[Buy It]
TEENAGER IN LOVE
Yo La Tengo
LOVE POTION #9
The Coasters
King : 1971
Available on: Down Home
Varese : 2007
[Buy It]
FUEL FOR LOVE
Wrinker's Experience
EMI : 1971?
[Out of Print]
A PRIVATE DANCE LESSON WITH...
The Unfuckwithable James Brown
IT'S GREAT TO BE YOUNG AND IN LOVE (DEMO)
Doc Pomus & Mort Schuman c.1959
Available on: Great To Be Young and in Love
Whiskey, Women, and... : 1990
[Buy It]
YOUR LOVE IS TRUE (DEMO)
Irma Thomas c. 1960
Available on: The Instant & Minit Story
Charly : 2005
[Buy It]
WILL YOU STILL LOVE ME TOMORROW
The Zombies c. 1965
Available on: Live at The BBC
Repertoire : 2003
[Buy It]
BABY, IT'S YOU
The Beatles c. 1963
Available on: Live at The BBC
Capitol : 1994
[Buy It]
TO LOVE SOMEONE (THAT DON'T LOVE YOU)
The Kaldirons
Twinight : 1970
Available on: Eccentric Soul: Twinight's Lunar Rotation
Numero : 2007
[Buy It]
A VALENTINE FROM EVA
Brad Neely
WILL YOU STILL LOVE ME TOMORROW
Slim Smith
Unity : 1971
Available on: Keep That Lovelight Shining
Trojan : 2004
[Buy It]
L-O-V-E
Nat "King" Cole
L-O-V-E
Capitol : 1964
[Buy It]
HAVE LOVE WILL TRAVEL
Richard Berry
Flip : 1959
Available on: Have "Louie" Will Travel
Ace : 2004
[Buy It]
WILL YOU STILL LOVE ME TOMORROW
Amy Winehouse
Bridget Jones Edge of Reason OST
UMVD : 2004
[Buy It]
PLEASE SEND ME SOMEONE TO LOVE
James Booker c. 1976
King of The New Orleans Keyboard
JSP : 2005
[Buy It]
...moistworks wishes you & yours a happy valentine's day.Labels: alex, love
posted by Alex
LINK |
Wednesday, February 14, 2007
SEA OF LOVE
Phil Phillips with the Twilights
Single
Mercury : 1959
[Buy It]
ALWAYS ON MY MIND
The Pet Shop Boys
Discography
Capitol : 1991
[Buy It]
HALAH
Mazzy Star
Rough Trade : 1990
[Buy It]
MAMA, YOU BEEN ON MY MIND
Bob Dylan
The Bootleg Series, Volumes 1-3
Columbia : 1991
[Buy It]
KATH
Sebadoh
Sebadoh III
Homestead : 1991
[Buy It]
Last week I sent an email to about twenty friends, relatives, ex-boyfriends, new friends, old friends, and people I hardly know but thought would have good answers, asking "I'm making a list for my Moistworks Valentine's Day post...what are your favorite love and anti-love songs...?"
My main reason for asking was that I was curious to see how certain people would respond. Who would ignore it, thinking "What a stupid question." Or, who would ask "Don't all songs fit into one category or the other?" Who would respond immediately with a long, rambling list, or who would write, also immediately, with "I need to think."
My people did not disappoint; I got all of the above. Al Green (obviously) and Ween (awesomely) showed up on several lists. Bob Dylan, yes (and even I, with vast ambivalence about him, am torn apart by the last line of this song). Nancy Sinatra, Frank Sinatra, Throbbing Gristle, Monochrome Set, Judas Priest, Orange Juice, Sebadoh, Van Halen, and the Buzzcocks, yes, yes, yes. But the best answers, which I did not anticipate, were those songs that would make absolutely no sense to anyone but me, due only to the nature of my relationship with the responder.
"Sea of Love" fits squarely into the last sentence. "That was the day I knew you were my pet," does not typically ring the bell of today's modern woman, yet the man who named that song has sent me so far to the brink of sanity and submissive lust that I could do nothing but nod and drool and wonder which version to use here. (Of course I opted for the one he had specified.) The Pet Shop Boys version of "Always on My Mind," could only be on the list of the man who held my hand at a concert in an airplane hangar in Berlin, as both of our jaws dropped at the odd and scary sight of a thousand German fists banging the air to the rhythm. "Halah" by Mazzy Star would be merely a pretty, dreamy whine were it not for the fact that the record was played over and over again to mask the sounds of the first great sex I ever had. "Kath" was mentioned by both a close friend who knows I wrote a poem after it in college and a man who has no idea how much my heart aches for him whenever I hear it.
All this to say: Love is such a specific, alchemical thing, that to merely hear someone else sing about his/her love for yet someone else doesn't quite register. To me, a love song is all about association. But anti-love, that's another story. Gut-tearing, nauseating rejection and loss, now that is indeed universal. Here, though, is where my friends did disappoint, and where I, for fear of breaking down into a quivering wreck before finishing this post, have failed. This is what I leave to you, dear readers. Tell me the saddest (or angriest) love songs you know, and by sunset (just in time for the east coasters to burn a mix for their dinnertime sweetie), I'll post a handful here.
Thank you! Here are some highlights. I wish I could post them all...
FARE THEE WELL, MISS CAROUSEL
Townes Van Zandt
Townes Van Zandt
Sunspots : 1969
[Buy It]
ALL THE LOVE I EVER HAD
Hank Williams
Single, 1951
Available on The Original Singles Collection
Mercury : 1991
[Buy It]
GIN HOUSE BLUES
Nina Simone
Nuff Said!
RCA : 1968
[Buy It]
THE CHAIN
Fleetwood Mac
Rumours
Warner : 1977
[Buy It]
HOW CAN YOU MEND A BROKEN HEART?
Al Green
Let's Stay Together
Hi Records : 1972
[Buy It]
And a late-stage addition, for a friend and reader who knows who he is (and whose own version I prefer but don't have a recording of):
EVERY TIME IT RAINS
Randy Newman
Bad Love
Dreamworks : 1999
[Buy It]Labels: indie, joanna, love, oldies, pop
posted by Joanna
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