Promises Made and Promises Broken, #SongLyricSunday #TheCranberries

“Why can’t you stay here awhile
Stay here awhile
Stay with me”

—The Cranberries, Promises

The Cranberries, Collective Soul, Pinback, Jann Arden, Phil Collins, Tears For Fears, Depeche Mode, Bjork, Sarah McLachlan, Sade, Ellie Goulding, City and Colour, Lily Allen, Eminem/JZ, John Legend, Bob Seger …

Song Lyric Sunday, #SongLyricSunday

Another Sunday has come around.

What was my first concert?

Hmm.

It’s strange how my memory is blurry on this question. I don’t really know why that is.

It’s The Cranberries! It’s got to be The Cranberries!

They were my favourite band, back when I had a favourite. It was “likely” my first concert and I had a date.

Aw, how sweet. Innocence, but I would learn a lot about promises, in love mostly, soon enough.

I went on to see this band four times, if memory serves, with boyfriends, sister, friends.

Promises – The Cranberries (Live in Paris)

This song talks of vows broken. As the song’s title suggests, of broken promises.

What is a promise made, worth?

I chose it because it was the big single, that first concert experience of mine, back in 1999.

The song is indeed a powerful one. It speaks to one of the biggest battles I struggle with.

I try real hard not to judge, as I know what being judged feels like, but when it comes to love and relationships, I often wonder why?

I know life is not as simple as I’d like it to be, that a promise seems huge and binding when its a child’s promise, such as in the promise many young people make, to stay best friends forever.

That is the first lesson, that promises are only good when they are made, but don’t guarantee their continuation. They end, when feelings change, and people are left to pick up the pieces.

I hear the anger and the frustration in Dolores’s voice, when she sings

You better believe I’m coming You better believe what I say You better hold on to your promises Because you bet, you’ll get what you deserve
She’s going to leave him over She’s gonna take her love away So much for your eternal vows, well It does not matter anyway clickable

I wish every love would last, every relationship would be never-ending, but songs like this bring those realities out into the open.

Oh, all the promises we made All the meaningless and empty words I prayed, prayed, prayed
Oh, all the promises we broke All the meaningless and empty words I spoke, spoke, spoke clickable

It feels meaningless, at the time, but it’s not, none of it. But is giving up the answer, in all situations? Of course not. The hopelessness of a broken promise makes me think on how relationships flourish and how they crash and burn.

What of all the things that you taught me What of all the things that you’d say What of all your prophetic preaching You’re just throwing it all away
Maybe we should burn the house down Have ourselves another fight Leave the cobwebs in the closet Cause tearing them out is just not right clickable

They put on an excellent live show. I will never forget how their music moved through me, all around me, holding me to my seat, frozen in awe.

Of course, a live song clip here isn’t quite the same, but I love to think back on how it felt to be there.

http://www.metrolyrics.com/promises-lyrics-cranberries.html

Fetching, Love Starved, and Dangerous #SongLyrics #LyricSunday #LoIsInDaBl

“You cannot quit me so quickly.”

“The space between…the wicked lies we tell, and hope to keep…safe from the pain.”

“But will I hold you again?”

“These fickle, fuddled words confuse me…like will it rain today?”

Okay, well I suppose you get Dave’s picture. Talk of “twisted games” and the rest…well, check it out for yourself, if you aren’t yet familiar with this song. His word play is excellent in it.

Sunday and it’s time for my favourite thing:

https://justfoolingaroundwithbee.wordpress.com/2016/02/07/loisindabl-7feb16-lyric-sunday/

I love love love

LYRICS.

It’s a small world because she writes about Five For Fighting,

just whom I spoke about in my post from yesterday.

Today though, I want to speak specifically about pop songs. You know them. They’re catchy, snappy, and they get stuck in your head. That’s what they are meant to do.

But are they good for us? Or do they encourage unhealthy expectations about love?

What’s the use of a love song, a pop tune, just like a mushy romantic movie, if not to make us all think our love lives should look similar? That our relationships should either soar just as high or crash and burn just as superbly?

As you can probably tell, I have thought a lot about this over the last fifteen years or so.

I’ve always loved song lyrics, but I’m not a kid anymore. I try to find the wisdom hidden in between those lines, as a young woman who was figuring out love and now, as a slightly older one, still figuring.

Taylor Swift comes to mind, and she has ever since I first heard her earliest offering that went from the country music scene, crossing over to the pop world, where I am more often to be found.

Taylor Swift’s “Love Story”

It was a Romeo and Julietesque tale, not very modern, mature, or realistic. She was just a kid when it came out and then we all watched her grow and go through many relationships, in the spotlight and through her lyrics.

And then there came the one about breaking up, making up, and breaking up again.

Taylor Swift’s “We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together”

“LIKE EVER!”

It all sounds like a bit of a joke, the language is that of a young person who doesn’t know what they want.

Games. False hope.

Does this sort of thing make most girls think there’s still hope, does it encourage a belief that if they just believe, then maybe just maybe? That when there’s drama, longing, and never quite stopping means it’s right or real or meant to last forever?

Does moving on become more challenging with these pop stars as models for love and relationships, when they themselves are just figuring things out as they go along too?

I ask all this about lyrics and I’m not even able to see the visual imagery in the music videos, all the stuff that young girls are exposed to, over and over again in the media.

“Life’s a game. Wanna play?”

Sounds like a line from Child’s Play, that creepy movie about the evil doll.

Taylor Swift’s “Blank Space”

Lots of people play games, some more than others. Talk of being young and reckless. We’re all reckless at one time, but being reckless with someone else’s feelings is just plain mean. We’ve all got to grow up sometime.

“Boys only want love if it’s torture. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

I guess I felt this, wishing I’d been warned beforehand, but only during more of my lost and angry moments.

Because I know drama is often a part of people’s lives, in love, but it’s not just one gender or the other.

“Cause you know I love the players, and you love the game.”

“Rose garden filled with thorns,” love the imagery Swift.

“So it’s gonna be forever, or it’s gonna go down in flames. You can tell me when it’s over, if the high was worth the pain.”

Was it all worth it in the end?

Wine’s Fine But Whisky’s Quicker, #SoCS

“Closing time – one last call for alcohol so finish your whiskey or beer. Closing time – you don’t have to go home but you can’t stay here.”

I like this song from the nineties. I thought it fit well, it came to mind, as soon as I finished reading, or should I say listening to an audiobook today and here is my review.

Modern Romance by Aziz Ansari

Ever hear of the saying from my title of this week’s Stream of Consciousness Saturday post?

Okay, so how many nights are bars and clubs full of people, looking for something, but just what are they looking for in those places?

It’s right up my alley. The topic of love, romance, and relationships and it is all from the hilarious comedic mind and heart of the Parks and Recreation star.

I will admit he wasn’t my favourite character on that show. I was more of a Ron Swanson fan, but since the end of the series I have watched some of his comedy specials. He is about my age and he is just trying to figure out the relationship questions facing many people of our age group.

Many of the topics he first covered on stage and in his jokes and humorous observations are what he put into his new NetFlix series, “Master of None”, a semi autobiographical snapshot (which I am in the middle of watching).

Here they now are in book form. Normally, I like to read books on my own. Occasionally though, the argument can be made to listen, especially when the book is narrated by the author himself. It brings a level of personality and humour that I wouldn’t get if I read it.

It begins with some catchy, smooth, chilling music as he introduces the book. It fits the romantic feeling he wants to bring across, until he can’t help his comedic style and starts yelling and calling us, the listeners lazy for not bothering to read on our own.

JK aside

🙂

I love this book because he discusses a lot of really interesting parts of modern romance in modern times, but he does it with little bursts of his signature sense of humour.

He tackles such topics as social media, online dating, sexting, what he terms the act of being “monogomish”, cheating, and our generation’s give-up attitude, not sticking things out and the fear that, with all the options of a wide open world, that we’re never happy and always wondering if there’s something better out there.

He uses some of his own life experiences in the dating world, focus groups and ReddIt forums, and studies and expert opinions from psychologists, anthropologists, and journalists who study love and relationships.

He even went into a retirement community and asked people from previous generations about love and marriage from their standpoint. One old guy was only there for the free doughnuts, but the rest did offer valuable insights into how they met their partners, when and why they got married, and how they feel their lives turned out.

The only way we can learn is by studying the past and by asking questions of those who have gone before us, but times do change. Okay, so sometimes the more things do change the more they remain the same.

This is both different and similar, as the years pass, but as the clock of our lives ticks on, what will we look back on at the end and regret that we didn’t do or feel?

Aziz and his team of interviewers and experts speak with people in North America, Europe, and Asia.

There are some interesting insights into how monogamy is handled in France when compared to the US. Either one going to extremes.

Women’s options were fewer and roles were measured in different ways years ago. Respect should be timeless and for everyone.

Can love really last?

Of course it can’t, not in the mad and passionate way spoken of in the book and desired by most of us.

His expert scientists share scans and, he points out there are graphs and charts in the book, but that they can’t be translated in the same way when listening to the audio version.

He talks about what I would think is obvious, but is one of the lesser obvious things from what I’ve seen: that new love is exciting and it lights up the brain just like a drug, but that this feeling can’t possibly last, nor should it. If someone chooses to continuously chase that high all their life, rather than accept life’s inevitable ups and downs, well there’s really nothing to be done to convince them that the benefits of finding one person to have as a partner and a companion could ever be more than enough.

I can’t fault social media and technology. My iPhone and the Internet are invaluable to me. Online dating websites have helped me open up and find people I never would have met otherwise. It’s all a matter of perspective.

Can these things make jealousy and deceit easier? Of course they can. Doesn’t mean these things did not exist before them. Shakespeare is proof of that.

In the book he quotes rapper Pitbull and a line in Spanish, translated to say:

“What the eyes don’t see the heart doesn’t feel.”

This is exactly the level of immaturity that exists out there, when people only care about themselves and have no consideration for anyone else.

I recently wrote about having faith, now that we’ve arrived at the Christmas season, that just because something can’t be seen with two eyes, doesn’t mean it isn’t there, happening, or could potentially hurt or harm other people.

Myself and every other blind person could tell you that many times the heart feels things, without having to see with the eyes. This just shows the many and varied beliefs, opinions, and experiences of love and romance.

This book was not a literary classic, but it was an excellent story and well told. You just can’t get the same affect without Ansari’s voice and his acting.

Has he himself found the kind of love that will flow from mad and passionate into a long term respectful companionship? Hard to say for sure, but if you enjoy audiobooks or books on love and relationships, I would recommend Modern Romance.

So, in closing…with one final piece of advice from the book:

He calls it, “acquired likability through repetition”, instead of nothing more than an “option that lives in your device”.

Okay, well it’s all often in the wording. Of course, he is simply referring to the picky way some people look for love, giving up on someone after one date, if they weren’t ready to see fireworks. Smart phones make it much too easy, he points out, to think of someone on the other end, side of a phone screen as one dimensional words in a little speech bubble, instead of a human being with feelings, hopes, and a heart.

What are your thoughts on these topics? Have you heard of monogomish? Do you think love can last? Is there any situation where cheating is acceptable? Are you an Aziz Ansari fan? Have you heard of the song I quote above?

SoCS

There you go with some music to start, a little book review, and my stream of consciousness ramblings for Linda’s weekly prompt:

http://lindaghill.com/2015/12/11/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-dec-1215/

Only one more left to go before Christmas is here.

Perfection: Jaggled Little Pill Turns Twenty, #TBT

It must have been important, if I was being taken out of class for this.

Oh no! Not again. What did I do now?

I wasn’t in trouble, not in the usual sense of the term. I just wasn’t trying hard enough, I guess, or so I was lead to believe.

I needed to focus. Why didn’t I want to go out for recess and play with my friends? Why wasn’t I putting up my hand and participating in class?

I should have been in heaven. After two years, I was finally reunited with my best friend. This year I had all my friends in my class. Everything should have been perfect, but everything was going wrong.

These little talks were expected to inspire me to try harder, I suppose, but until a real diagnosis could be offered to explain my behaviours, I was considered falling behind and possibly unable to keep up.

I’d done well, these past six years, but maybe trying to remain in school with my sighted peers was just not working out anymore.

PERFECT

It’s the quality or state of being perfect.

Freedom from fault or defeat, flawlessness.

The quality or state of being saintly.

Definition of “perfection” – Merriam-Webster

You know how it is said that nobody’s perfect?

I know we can all relate. We know we can never achieve it, but we keep trying, we keep on hoping anyway.

“Run another lap, once more around the school yard.”

“Get up. It’s not good for your system to do that. You should remain standing, for your muscles.”

My gym teacher barked his orders at me, but all I could feel was the cool damp grass against my cheek, right in the place I had collapsed, after running laps had taken every ounce of energy I possessed. I couldn’t move. I felt near death. I was failing.

It’s been twenty years since “Jagged Little Pill” was released.

Check out the guest post I wrote for a music blog, just last weekend, to find out why “Perfect” became my ultimate favourite of all the songs on Alanis’s breakout album:

Jingle Jangle Jungle – Perfection (Guest post)

Let’s go back there, to the mid nineties: 1995/96 to be exact and my failure to do anything right, no matter how hard I tried.

People didn’t do it on purpose. They didn’t intend to pummel me with expectations and demands on my energy and on my abilities. They wanted me to be a part of my class and the year, to get good grades and thrive socially, but I was barely keeping my head above water. It was a year of confusion and I lived it in a fog of fear and stress and pain.

I was twelve years old when I first heard it. It was unlike anything I’d ever heard, right up there with albums from Celine Dion, Mariah Carey, and Sheryl Crow. These female singer song writers were my idols, my soundtracks to the decade, with all of its ups and downs.

I wondered what had happened to her, why she was so angry, not having experienced anything close to what she seemed to be describing. Romantic love was not yet a concept I could imagine.

She starts the song saying she wishes nothing but the best for him, rumoured to be Joey Gladstone (Dave Coulier) from Full House, but I couldn’t actually believe it.

Then…

I’m here to remind you of the mess you left when you went away.

You seem very well. Things look peaceful. I’m not quite as well. I thought you should know.

It’s so conversational sounding. Yet, so powerful in its raw emotions.

Now, I understand that feeling of betrayal, at the idea of someone you once loved moving on with someone else.

I want you to know, I’m happy for you. I wish nothing but, the best, for you both.

And every time you speak her name, does she know how you told me you’d hold me until you die, till you die, but you’re still alive.

You Oughta Know (Official Video)

Such a roller coaster of emotions that I had yet to experience.

All I knew, in 1996, was that the song had a swear word that, most times, was cut out. Ah, aw, to be young and innocent.

You oughta know. You learn.

I would learn, eventually, yes. I would learn.

🙂

You Learn (Official Video)

You live. You learn.

You love. You learn.

You cry. You Learn. You lose. You learn.

You bleed. You learn. You scream. You learn.

I would bleed and scream and cry. Hundreds of needles. Multiple surgeries.

In this song, she specifically uses the words “jagged little pill”. I was having to take a lot of pills in the nineties, literally, but I would one day learn the metaphorical swallowing of life’s difficult pills she was referring to.

I would live. I would love. I would lose.

Loss of love         would be one of those difficult pills to swallow.

Alanis must have encountered a lot of sexist treatment, but from the sounds of this iconic album, she stood up for herself, no problem.

Her catholic background, growing up in Ottawa, in Canada all make their appearances, in and amongst her thoughts on men, irony, and pills, as jagged as they sometimes are.

🙂

Songs ranged from angry feminist rants, to religious reflection, to sad musings.

What’s the matter, Mary Jane. Tell me. Please be honest, Mary Jane. Tell me.”

In my own head, when I would listen, I would change the name of Mary Jane in the song to Kerry Lynn.

It’s a long way down, on this roller coaster.

–Mary Jane, lyrics

It felt like a roller coaster, but it’s funny how much music can help and just how much it sticks with you, bringing back the memories it was there to first witness as they happened.

I learned about irony from Alanis, even if the song is a little much. It’s a classic, all these years later still.

🙂

Good thing I learned more about what irony means in English class.

Hand in My Pocket (Lyrics)

I’m sane but I’m overwhelmed.

I’m lost but I’m hopeful.

I feel drunk but I’m sober.

I care but I’m restless.

I’m here but I’m really gone.

And what it comes down to, is I haven’t got it all figured out just yet.

I’m green but I’m wise.

I’m sad but I’m laughing.

I’m brave but I’m chicken shit.

But what it comes down to, is that nobody’s got it all figured out just yet.

What it all comes down to my friends, is that we’re gonna be fine, fine, fine.

These flip flopping emotions were, to me, highly relatable.

I was, most often during those years, putting on the bravest of faces through the pain inside. People began to praise my bravery in the shadow of the medical problems I was dealing with, but deep down I felt that chicken shit thing she mentions, from that first time the doctor said the words “needle” and “surgery”.

🙂

Her sad and raging made way for the more hopeful and upbeat.

Head Over Feet (Official Video)

So maybe she had found acceptance and happiness after all, through writing Jagged Little Pill, harmonica playing not withstanding.

😉

Maybe love and peace were possible, throughout all the turmoil and the growing pains.

This gave me hope that things were going to get better.

Last but not least, it had a secret song! How cool was that, back when I was newly discovering CDs? You had to be patient, if you waited after the last song ended, and there it was.

I wouldn’t truly understand her songs about love and relationships, not until much later, but now I sure can.

Your House (Secret Song)

If you never heard this one, never had the patience to wait after the album was technically done, I highly recommend you check it out.

It is full of longing and desperation. Sure, it may be a stockerish song at heart, but it is how we all feel, at one time or another, whether we’d admit it out loud or not like she did.

To listen to the album, in its entirety, go here:

Jagged Little Pill

Thank you, Alanis and JLP, for getting me through the nineties and the hard stuff. You’re still helping.

Bell Let’s Talk Day 2015: Love and Depression

Lana Del Ray, Young and Beautiful from The Great Gatsby Soundtrack, on YouTube

I had gone through episodic times where I felt pulled down by sadness and despair, mental health issues had touched my family, but never had I experienced anything like this before.

I fell in love with someone with depression.

The first six months of a new relationship are thrilling and exciting. Depression was kept at bay, at least from me, and maybe even him.

However, once real life crept in and time moved along, reality set in.

I had no real clue what to expect or any clear understanding how I would handle being the girlfriend of someone whose good days were good and whose bad days could be pretty bad. If I had been more prepared, I still don’t know how I would have prepared for the worry, the fear, and the stress. I was so far in love by the time I would learn what living every day with depression in my relationship was going to be like, that by then there was no going back and I didn’t want to.

What do you do when you care so much for someone by then? How could I turn back, how did I see our life going forward, and what was I to do when the bad days began?

If I were this weighed down by these questions, just imagine how he felt. I did and I tried, constantly. I often grew obsessed by trying so hard to put myself in his shoes, even for a moment, to feel what he might be feeling.

“I know…I know,” I continuously told myself. There was no way I could. My ability for empathy drove me crazy thinking I could truly understand, even attempt to.

There’s no real way to describe the weight of it.

One moment our love felt like enough to carry us through the dark days and the next thing I knew a wall shot up between us, boxing him away from me, somewhere I could not follow and felt unable to travel with him. I could kick and I could scream but what would be the point if the wall would not come down, only dismantled, brick by brick, by hands that were not my own.

It’s times like these that I felt his struggles and him struggle most acutely.

Helplessness would threaten to overtake me and I could feel the undertow threatening to pull him down and away from us, from himself.

I didn’t want to feel the anger, directed at nobody in particular but at myself more than anyone else.

Love, I hoped, could be the answer. I could have told myself before falling, how naive of me and just how unrealistic of a hope this was, that depression and mental illness could not be battled and defeated strictly with the love of a good woman, not even me.

While I lived day to day with these realities, on the other hand, my guilt grew with every sad day he had. Why wasn’t I enough to stem the flow of his pain? What more could I do.

How selfish of me, to think this way. This wasn’t about me, but soon love and pain became so tightly entwined that I didn’t know, some days, how to separate the two elements.

If I wasn’t careful, my guard was let down, and we would wake to one of those blue bad days.

Winter and January, following the busy days of the Christmas season and with the start of a new year, these ran into some particularly dark days, when the cold and the snow made for one long season. I could fight the stir-crazy and the cabin-fever, but easier said than done for him. Soon my fear of this time of year was very much a rational one.

Then the days would lengthen and the sun would shine. Would these environmental factors be enough?

Medication, enough sleep, enough sunshine, fresh air and exercise.

I knew the ins and outs of what could contribute, in both good and bad ways, to the harshness of depression.

Love and stress were much greyer of areas. I couldn’t be that perfect girlfriend I so wanted to be for him, one that would be the difference between being his salvation and a part of the problem.

Silly were these thoughts I started to have. I could not make anyone happy that was not happy with themselves. If there were an imbalance in our relationship or in his brain chemistry, how much control did I have over these things?

If I could only make him laugh more. If I could only make him his favourite meal or offer him the right amount of peace and serenity at the end of a long day that he told me, in the early days of dating, I had been enough to provide.

“All I could do was love him,” I would tell myself.

I would hear the soon all-to-familiar words coming out of his mouth, that he just felt blue that day, just not himself, and my stomach would drop and my heart would sink.

How was it possible to feel both my stomach and my heart all the way down in my feet?

Here we go again, but no and wait…he didn’t choose to feel like that. I just had to wait it out and it would pass.

It would pass, right?

I am using this date, January 28th, Bell Let’s Talk Day to write about these extremely difficult memories of the harder parts of love, in among the tricky minefields of depression.

I believe, though I could not make his pain and his suffering go away, that I learned how to become an even more loving, sensitive, and compassionate person for my own sake. I will take this into any future relationships, whether depression is an issue or not, and I will know what it is like to love someone, no matter what they may be living with, all the more deeply and entirely without self-absorption.

I had to get over the fact that although I hoped my own experiences living my own life with some of the extra hardships I have might have been the thing to hold us together. I had to face the fact that all the love in the world that I hoped I could give might not be the thing to ensure a for-certain future. I knew the cure for depression wasn’t in my own hands.

I can honestly say that watching someone you love go through such ups and downs of depression, when you witness the sometimes daily roller coaster, is one of the hardest experiences life can throw your way.

I wanted to write about it though, as hard as it is to talk about for me, because I feel that it’s important to speak about. I never wanted to admit I felt such guilt and anger with myself, so hard for me to admit, but these feelings are a part of a very important period of my past.

As important as it is for us to talk about mental illness, to “stop the stigma”, I know I would have benefited from hearing experiences like mine before I felt what it felt like when love and depression mix.

How could I s