Precious Lellow #SongLyricSunday

I just love how little kids pronounce yellow.

Lellow.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUFSB2plwzM

I love this song. It may not fit the theme exactly, but amber is a colour, a gold, metal, jewel. Whatever. I don’t know. All I know is that The song is super catchy.

***

Brainstorm
take me away from the norm
I got to tell you something
this phenomenon
I had to put it in a song
and it goes like Whoa,
amber is the color of your energy
whoa, shades of gold displayed naturally
you ought to know what brings me here
you glide through my head blind to fear
and I know why
whoa, amber is the color of your energy
whoa, shades of gold displayed naturally
Whoa, amber is the color of your energy
whoa, shades of gold displayed naturally
You live too far away
your voice rings like a bell anyway
don’t give up your independence unless it feels so right
nothing good comes easily
sometimes you gotta fight
Whoa, amber is the color of your energy
whoa, shades of gold displayed naturally
launched a thousand ships in my heart, so easy still it’s fine from afar, and you know that
whoa, brainstorm take me away from the norm
whoa, I got to tell you something

LYRICS

***

This week
Song Lyric Sunday
is a simple one. I won’t say much more than this.

I do want to congratulate the one in charge of this weekly musical and lyrical blogging exercise on her marriage.

Love is more precious than any jewel.

Only When I Breathe #SongLyricSunday

How can I put this? How can I possibly make people understand how it feels?

I struggled with these kinds of questions for many years. Pain can be physical or emotional. Both, I know now, are comparable.

This song is not her biggest hit. I’d say Melissa Etheridge was at the top of her game in the nineties, but this one came out a few years after I’d started experiencing daily pain around the year 2000, from either headaches or somewhere in the rest of my body, mostly my limbs, but really a sensitivity to the touch.

This song was likely about emotional pain, which most songs are about, but by this time Melissa probably experienced both, within relationships or physically because of the breast cancer she was diagnosed with.

***

I, played the fool today
I just dream of vanishing into the crowd
Longing for home again
Home, is a feeling I buried in you
I’m alright, I’m alright
It only hurts when I breathe
And I can’t ask for things to be still again
No I can’t ask if I could walk through the world, in your eyes
Longing for home again
Home, is a feeling I buried in you
I’m alright, I’m alright
It only hurts when I breathe
I’m alright, I’m alright
It only hurts when I breathe
My window through which nothing hides And everything sees
I’m counting the signs and cursing the miles in between
Home
Home, is a feeling I buried in you, that I buried in you
I’m alright, I’m alright
It only hurts when I breathe
I’m alright, I’m alright
It only hurts when I breathe, when I breathe
Yeah, it only hurts when I breathe, when I breathe
Oh,it only hurts when I breathe

LYRICS

***

It’s hard to make people understand. We all experience emotional pain from loss of a loved one or other family troubles. Love ends. People leave.

Most of us get a headache or the flu or a broken bone at some point in our lives. I know that child birth can be painful, not from personal experience but from those who have felt it, but I know that pain fades because of the reward for it in the existence of a precious child. Most acute pain fades from our memory as time passes.

It’s chronic pain that is hard to explain because most people, like the thought of living life as a blind person, can’t or don’t want to think too hard about it, don’t want to imagine that happening to them, but living with chronic pain changes you. It’s changed me.

The awful pain scale is a familiar way to help people understand, but pain is subjective and one’s ten is another’s seven. If ten is the worst pain you’ve ever experienced, what was that worst pain? Everyone has had such varied experiences with pain that it makes it hard to rate sufficiently.

Stabbing…throbbing…dull…sharp…pounding…and so on and so forth.

I’ve only found a few people in my life who truly understood it. One of them is gone, so I am greatly familiar with both emotional and physical pain from many sources.

I decided this
Song Lyric Sunday
I would focus more on the physical side, as I’ve written plenty on emotional pain already.

I don’t talk a lot about living with chronic pain, here or elsewhere, because I don’t believe people truly want to hear about it too often. This song brings it up in the chorus though, as saying “it only hurts when I breathe.” While coming off sounding dramatic, this one line certainly gets the point across.

Don’t get me wrong, I love breathing, but I could do without the pain.

The Rain Falls On My Tongue #SongLyricSunday

“What’s new? How’s the weather? Is it stormy where you are? You sound so close but it feels like you’re so far.”

—Billie Myers, Kiss The Rain

April brings the rain.

For the first time in several months, when water falls from the sky, it falls as rain instead of snow.

I saw the prompt and immediately thought of Madonna or Adele. Then a lesser known song from my teenage years came into my mind.

This song appeared on a compilation CD I got as a gift and first I thought it was Tracy Chapman. She sounds similar.

I liked this song, as a confused teenaged girl.

***

Hello, can you hear me?
Am I getting through to you?
Hello, is it late there?
Is there laughter on the line?
Are you sure you’re there alone
‘Cause I’m trying to explain?
Something’s wrong
You just don’t sound the same
Why don’t you?
Why don’t you go outside?
Go outside
Kiss the rain
Whenever you need me
Kiss the rain
Whenever I’m gone too long
If your lips feel lonely and thirsty
Kiss the rain
And wait for the dawn
Keep in mind
We’re under the same sky
And the night’s
As empty for me as for you
If you feel
You can’t wait till morning
Kiss the rain, kiss the rain, kiss the rain
Hello, do you miss me?
I hear you say you do
But not the way I’m missing you
What’s new? How’s the weather?
Is it stormy where you are?
You sound so close but it feels like you’re so far
Oh, would it mean anything
If you knew
What I’m left imagining
In my mind, my mind
Would you go? Would you go?
Kiss the rain
As you fall over me
Think of me, think of me
Think of me, only me
Kiss the rain
Whenever you need me
Kiss the rain
Whenever I’m gone too long
If your lips
Feel hungry and tempted
Kiss the rain
And wait for the dawn
Keep in mind
We’re under the same sky
And the nights
As empty for me as for you
If you feel
You can’t wait till morning
Kiss the rain
Kiss the rain
Kiss the rain
Kiss the rain
Kiss the rain
Kiss the rain
Kiss the rain
Hello, can you hear me?
Can you hear me?
Can you hear me?
Can you hear me?

LYRICS

***

This has been another
Song Lyric Sunday
and here’s to the cleansing power of the rain.

Chasing Horizons, #SongLyricSunday

Road trips are one of my favourite things.

This song, any time it comes on, reminds me of sunny days on an open highway.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y1D3a5eDJIs

I race toward the horizon. Yet, I am in no hurry.

***

It was a beautiful day, the sun beat down I had the radio on, I was drivin’
Trees flew by, me and Del were singin’ little Runaway I was flyin’
[Chorus:] Yeah runnin’ down a dream That never would come to me Workin’ on a mystery, goin’ wherever it leads Runnin’ down a dream
I felt so good
like anything was possible
I hit cruise control and rubbed my eyes
The last three days the rain was un-stoppable It was always cold, no sunshine
[Chorus]
I rolled on as the sky grew dark
I put the pedal down
to make some time
There’s something good waitin’ down this road I’m pickin’ up whatever’s mine
[Chorus Out]

Lyrics

***

On this lovely April day, the weather is perfectly seasonal and for this week’s Song Lyric Sunday,
I am thinking about taking a road trip.

All the while, I remember those I’ve gone on in the past fondly.

Past and Passing, #SongLyricSunday

Okay, so I decided to try the A to Z Challenge, on a whim yesterday, but the trick of it is that you are supposed to blog for every letter of the alphabet, each day except Sunday. Well, the challenge began on a Saturday this year, so I guess I can use today to prep for Monday’s post.

And also I can do my favourite thing of the week.

Song Lyric Sunday #SongLyricSunday

In the month of March (of which we just completed a few days ago) a friend was posting for an 80s music challenge on Facebook. She shared a song from that decade, every day, and then she extended it. I discovered some great ones from her. I joined in for a week, stopped for a week or two, and then thought I would end the month (on the final days which were 30/31st) by posting two more.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NvsMKYgCsM

This is the first of the final two I posted, on March 30th.

I like it because it is a beautiful song by Richard Marx and I love the saxophone solo and the fantasy feeling throughout. Apparently he wrote it about him and his wife and a trip they took to Hawaii together.

Endless Summer Nights, 1988

Sounds like paradise to me.

***

Summer came and left without a warning
All at once I looked and you were gone
And now you’re looking back at me
Searching for a way that we can be like we were before
Now I’m back to what I knew before you
Somehow the city doesn’t look the same
I’d give my life for one more night
Of having you here to hold me tight; oh, please
Take me there again Oh, oh

[Chorus:]
And I remember how you loved me
Time was all we had until the day we said goodbye
I remember every moment of those endless summer nights

I still recall the walks along the beaches
And the way your hair would glisten in the sun
Rising in the afternoon Making love to you under the moon, oh
Do you remember all the nights we spent in silence
Every single breath you took was mine
We can have it all again
Say that you’ll be with me when the sun brings your heart to mine Oh, oh

[Chorus]

There’s only so much I can say So please don’t run away from what we have together
It’s only you and me tonight So let’s stay lost in flight Oh, won’t you please surrender

[Chorus]

Endless Summer Nights (Lyrics)

******

So, I went with A to Z Lyrics because that kind of mirrors the A to Z Challenge and I like coincidences like those.

I like this Richard Marx song because it feels nostalgic and that’s what the eighties feels like to me. He’s looking back on a past memory, a passing thought, vacation in paradise with a lover. The story is told well from Marx’s POV.

I, myself, was born in 1984 and so it’s the decade where I was able to just be a kid, with my family, a simpler time in reflection.

I’ll never get that back and that makes me sad, despite everything I’ve been lucky to have and experience since those years of innocence, when everything was under control in my world and I was taken care of. It feels like so long ago now, a time long gone by.

In the moment, sometimes, it feels like it will last forever, an endless perfect moment or night with someone you loved. Sadly, realistically, it never does.

And one more, likely lesser known 80s song, from my favourite movie of the decade: 3 Men and a Baby.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aznod0Ij43g

BONUS.

Boy, do I love 80s music.

Stung and Still Standing, #Purple #EpilepsyAwarenessDay #SongLyricSunday

“No dress rehearsal. This is our life.”
—The Tragically Hip

I am fascinated by history and by time passing, as it does with every year of life I get to live.

This week I was initially stumped by the theme for
Song Lyric Sunday
which was about healing.

I’ve done a lot of that, physical scars and emotional ones too. For some reason though, I couldn’t think of a song. Then I watched the newest interpretation of the Anne of Green Gables story and heard their theme song.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QE2joQsWXJg

This song was included on a CD I received, as a get well gift, twenty years ago. This was back when I hardly had more than a few CD’s and barely even a CD player to play them in.

I walked to the nurses station and felt the funny cardboard case in my hand. As a thirteen-year-old girl, I thought the lyrics of this song strange, baffling, yet humorous.

***

First thing we’d climb a tree
and maybe then we’d talk
Or sit silently
and listen to our thoughts
With illusions of someday
casting a golden light
No dress rehearsal,
this is our life

And that’s where the hornet stung me
And I had a feverish dream
With revenge and doubt
Tonight we smoke them out

You are ahead by a century (this is our life)
You are ahead by a century (this is our life)
You are ahead by a century

Stare in the morning shroud
and then the day began
I tilted your cloud,
you tilted my hand
Rain falls in real time
and rain fell through the night
No dress rehearsal,
this is our life

But that’s when the hornet stung me
And I had a serious dream
With revenge and doubt
Tonight we smoke them out

You are ahead by a century (this is our life)
You are ahead by a century (this is our life)
You are ahead by a century
You are ahead by a century (this is our life)
You are ahead by a century (this is our life)
You are ahead by a century

And disappointing you is getting me down

Lyrics

***

This song’s lyrics aren’t specifically about healing, but when I remember the girl I was, upon holding that cardboard case, I remember the hospital in Toronto I was standing in. I had done a lot of healing, multiple surgeries between ages twelve and sixteen, and I had so much ahead of me, not all so easy to heal from.

But I was receiving a fresh start, a kidney from my father, and would I make a good life for myself with what I was being given? I was lucky to be alive, to have the best medical care possible, and I had all my life in front of me.

I still don’t know if I am appreciative enough of what that time of healing and sacrifice from my family, from so many medical professionals, brought – if I have made them all proud enough. It’s enough to show a person, at a young age, that life is precious and these lyrics now carry the greatest of weights to me, if not then.

Today is World Epilepsy Day.

Purple

Twenty years later and I now worry about my brother, with every seizure he has. The brain is a miraculous thing, with all the wear and tear it can go through and how it can heal. At least we both have working kidney transplants, for this moment, because who knows what time will bring.

Multiple surgeries, countless needles, and I’m still afraid of being stung by a hornet.

Flying High, #SongLyricSunday

If I could have one super power, I would want to fly like a bird.

Some songs get covered more than others.

Love me a well executed
cover song,
but I had trouble choosing one.

I thought there would be so many I wouldn’t know which one to pick, but then I drew a blank. Perhaps there are just too many that my mind wouldn’t come up with any at all.

Oh, wait…here’s one:

The great Leonard Cohen originally wrote it, but this is the one I know from my childhood. (Lyrics may vary slightly.)

***

Like a bird on the wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir I have tried in my way to be free.
Like a worm on a hook, like a knight from some old fashioned book I have saved all my ribbons for thee.
If I, if I have been unkind, I hope that you can just let it go by.
If I, if I have been untrue I hope you know it was never to you.
Like a baby, stillborn, like a beast with his horn I have torn everyone who reached out for me.
But I swear by this song and by all that I have done wrong I will make it all up to thee.
I saw a beggar leaning on his wooden crutch, he said to me, “You must not ask for so much.”
And a pretty woman leaning in her darkened door, she cried to me, “Hey, why not ask for more?”
Oh like a bird on the wire, like a drunk in a midnight choir I have tried in my way to be free.

Here are Cohen’s lyrics.

***

I liked this Neville Brothers rendition and sound, as a child, because I heard them singing about a bird, up on a wire and flying free.

So many parts of life feel like restraints. I have always imagined, when I’ve heard a bird fly overhead, that I could be free up there too, with a new and different overview and perspective on the world.

What super power would you choose and why? What is your favourite song covered?