Crossing The Line Between, #SongLyricSunday

I am obsessed with writing, with literature, and with travel.

When does an obsession turn into something dangerous?

A relief to say, to admit honestly here, to you, that love, though wonderful )while it lasts) and difficult (when it comes to an end) doesn’t make that list.

Song Lyric Sunday, #SongLyricSunday

Obsession can be over another person (inside of or from the outside of a relationship) in love and romance, over a material object, or a place one really wishes to visit, true:

I have, in my time, become obsessed with a specific song I’d just heard. This one is full of passion that I didn’t see as anything more than that, anything bad, as a younger person who loved this song.

Romance. Passion. Nothing more than that.

Right?

***

Listen as the wind blows from across the great divide
voices trapped in yearning, memories trapped in time
the night is my companion, and solitude my guide
would I spend forever here and not be satisfied?

and I would be the one
to hold you down
kiss you so hard
I’ll take your breath away
and after, I’d wipe away the tears
just close your eyes dear

Through this world I’ve stumbled
so many times betrayed
trying to find an honest word to find
the truth enslaved
oh you speak to me in riddles
and you speak to me in rhymes
my body aches to breathe your breath
your words keep me alive

And I would be the one
to hold you down
kiss you so hard
I’ll take your breath away
and after, I’d wipe away the tears
just close your eyes dear

Into this night I wander
it’s morning that I dread
another day of knowing of
the path I fear to tread
oh into the sea of waking dreams
I follow without pride
nothing stands between us here
and I won’t be denied

and I would be the one
to hold you down
kiss you so hard
I’ll take your breath away
and after, I’d wipe away the tears
just close your eyes…

LYRICS

***

WRONG!!!

One line from this song reminds me of the famous scene from Fatal Attraction. Perhaps you know the one I’m referring to, from the lyric I am singling out.

Creepy, but it speaks to an important issue, something song lyrics often does.

I guess, this week’s prompt gives me my chance to speak up on what’s going on the news lately, but on what has been really been happening all along. The topic of obsession can be easily overcome, in time, when it is the latest object in a store window or magazine or online. When it comes to a person, the line can blur, can quickly be crossed from obsession to possession, it’s a different story.

This song is not romantic, as my younger self thought, before I gave the appropriate weight, scope and gravity to all the lyrics. Rather, it is a chilling story of one person’s obsession, wish for possession, of a certain celebrity, but really, of another human being.

Possession

All the stuff Sarah sings about, from the one in the song’s perspective about holding someone down and kissing them so hard, this is the chilling thing.

If it is consensual, if one person wants to be handled this way, there is passion. In the case of this song’s topic of stocking, as a behaviour, there is nothing romantic about it. This song, then, serves as a sort of warning to keep away. Restraining orders aren’t the answer, aren’t always enough, and things can get scary, fast.

Sarah McLachlan had this happen to her, as a famous person, but there are so many variations of the kind of harassment, assault, the criminal acts we’re all hearing so much about from those in power or those who don’t know where to draw the line. We need to keep talking about things like this, not keep it all so hidden and silent.

Striding Through Flickering Flame, #SongLyricSunday

“I yearn for comfort.”

—Sarah McLachlan

There are a lot of songs with fire as the theme; and, indeed, with the word “fire” in the title or the chorus itself.

Song Lyric Sunday, #SongLyricSunday

Here is my pick:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ar6a1pkiGf8

It’s about continuing to walk into the fire, again and again, and a little at a time. It’s about doing this until I am immune from the heat of it.

***

Mother, teach me, to walk again
Milk and honey, so intoxicating
[
CHORUS]
And into the fire
I’m reunited
Into the fire
I am the spark
Into the fire I yearn for comfort

Open the doors that lead on, in to Eden
Don’t want, no cheap disguise
I follow the signs, marked back to the beginning
No more compromise
[
CHORUS]
Free the water that carries me to the sea
You I see as my security
[
CHORUS]
I will stare into the sun
until its light doesn’t blind me
I will walk into the fire until its heat doesn’t burn me
And I will feed the fire
[
CHORUS]

LYRICS

***

This is one of her earlier works. It has power. It has punch. It is a force to be reckoned with.

The guitar solos are attention-grabbing. It showed me Sarah McLachlan and the talent she possessed.

I love how she places together fire and the sea. The idea of those two different, yet, clearly powerful elements made me stand up and pay attention to her message here.

I stare at the flames of a fire, in a fireplace or outside, and I watch the bright flames flickering.

Their dark background always made them stand out to me, me and my fading eyesight, and I couldn’t believe something so sharp, its brightness in contrast to the darkness around it. It seemed unnatural, unreal to me, like something supernatural that I’d see in my mind or in a dream of some sort.

I’d imagine reaching out for it, passing my hand through it, passed the pain that would cause, to the other side of something. The smells of smoke, the crackling sound, the heat it’s emitting were all the senses I could trust (in it and in myself), but there was something more to it.

I don’t have to walk through actual fire to grow stronger. All the fires of life test me and my strength for coming out again on the opposite side of it all.

Then I hear of wildfires burning, out of control out west, and the smoke hanging heavy in the air, and I can’t imagine. All I think then is back to that image of the unnatural looking flames, against the dark background of nothingness.

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

A Little Late to the Party: Scrambling and Fumbling, #SoCS #SongLyricSunday

I hear a rumble in the distance. Is it thunder? A storm rolling in?

I stumble and I scramble and I fumble through this life.

I fumble for a foothold. I scramble for cover. I stumble with every other step I take.

I search for a semblance, any semblance of normality. I am embarrassed by all this. I am emblazoned with the residue of these mistakes I repeatedly make.

I tremble in the night. I feel dumb and numb.

I want to feel it and I don’t. I feel like I’ve lost a limb, but I count and they’re still all here.

What is it I’m missing, then?

This has been a mashup of

Stream of Consciousness Saturday, #SoCS

which I actually did start on Saturday, but it’s been one of those crazy weekends.

Lets see if the pingback worked for this. I am told it likely would not.

And with

Song Lyric Sunday

which I think my theme fits and the two prompts this weekend will tie together nicely:

90’s Music (Again with the broken pingbacks.)

Sarah McLachlan IS Canadian music during that decade. This song isn’t from my favourite album, but a few years before, in the early nineties, this beautifully written song was released.

Since “mb” was the prompt for Stream of Consciousness Saturday this week, I felt like returning to this classic from my early years. I was just a girl when this song came out, and I could hardly know much about what ecstasy was, but I guess it can mean a lot of things, describe a lot of experiences in life.

I do know there are a lot of words with “mb” in them and that made the song I chose an easy choice.

Then I went with a feeling, one that seems to resinate, and that’s fumbling, stumbling, scrambling. I know these things well. If you’re lucky, you can stumble right into any number of forms of ecstasy, after all the stumbling and fumbling and scrambling are gone.

Song lyrics for Sarah McLachlan’s “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy”

Hope I’ve managed to make some sense, somewhere in there. I did experience feeling ecstatic this weekend, when creativity produced something of such quality, stemming from several hours of hard work. I was so proud and so unbelievably ecstatic.

Fumbling Towards Ecstacy – Sarah McLachlan

Sarah says to not fear love.

Like the Deserts Miss the Rain, #SoCS

I really enjoyed the variety of the stream of consciousness prompts these past few weeks, but Linda’s back for Stream of Consciousness Saturday once more:

http://lindaghill.com/2015/12/04/the-friday-reminder-and-prompt-for-socs-dec-515/

Welcome home Linda.

🙂

Let me speak for everyone when I say we missed you. Canada missed you too.

SoCS

Speaking of missing…missing something or someone…

I immediately thought of a favourite song of mine because I am always thinking of songs.

I first heard Everything But The Girl’s Missing when I was fourteen.

Missing – Everything But The Girl

It came on a music compilation CD I bought with my Christmas money from that year. We went to the mall and I discovered Women & Songs, a spin off of Lilith Fair, an all female tour put on by a Canadian music legend: Sarah McLachlan.

This was when CD’s were still the big thing, back when I was still a kid. I miss that, both those things.

I did not yet know the feeling of missing in all the ways I soon would.

I knew what it felt like to be missing a grandparent. It had happened to me four years earlier, quite unexpectedly. Growing up would mean only more of that feeling of missing people I loved, would love, and would lose in one way or another.

CD’s and songs like Women & Songs and Missing would be what I would cling to, when the feeling of missing became too painful that I didn’t know how I would cope.

The song Missing is a bit of a sad tale really. Missing someone to the point of being stuck in the past. I didn’t want that to happen to me, but how could I stop it? How could I get past the missing, put one foot in front of the other and move past it?

You never really do. I don’t think I ever will. I must still try.

Missing, in this case, is a song about longing. It’s actually about the act of stocking, if you get right down to it, but not in a psychotic way I think. Whoever is in this song is a pitiful shell of who they once were. That is no way to be, to live.

The scars I have from the missing I do are always with me, but their mark fades a little with time.

I miss the sight I used to have and the colours I can no longer see. I miss the colour red, so much so sometimes that I want to cry. I miss the face of a loved one, so much so sometimes that it makes me want to scream.

I miss the feeling I got the first time I read Harry Potter or what it felt like to fall in love for the first time.

I miss a friend who isn’t meant to still be in my life or I begin to miss another friend, even though she isn’t even gone yet.

I miss a grandparent who couldn’t possibly stay, disappearing from this world. And me, helpless to stop it. I miss a parent or other family member who I haven’t even lost yet.

A relationship, love gone wrong and ended, and again I lost out.

I missed my chance, for a life with someone or more time with a loved one. I missed an opportunity for another path in life. Blink and you’ve missed it, you’ve missed it all.

Could you be dead?

The song asks this. Some of the people I miss are and others aren’t, but how come it always feels this way? I don’t see someone any longer and my mind automatically goes there, even when I don’t want it to.

Maybe, in a way, it’s easier for my mind to think of all those I miss as gone undeniably and for good. Maybe it’s just easier to cope, in an odd way. Maybe it’s how I’m preparing myself for a future of missing, but wait…

I spend so much of my life missing people that I miss out on other things. The rest of it starts to pass me by. I often feel sorry for myself, just missing the mark somehow.

I missed my train. I miss certain people like the desert does miss the rain. That song uses this to create a vivid image of what it feels like to miss. I can’t get over how strong that image is and I feel it, every time I hear Missing.

What do you miss? Could be a person, place, or a thing.

Oh Canada

Today is Canada’s 147th Birthday and so I wanted to celebrate by bragging about why I love my country. I don’t usually brag about anything, but Canada is worth it to me.

Okay, so I don’t like maple syrup or poutine, (yes, I realize this could get me kicked out). There are, however, plenty of things I do love in their stead. Here are just ten.

1. My Oma and Opa chose Canada and they came here and worked hard to make a new life. They raised a good family and that is how I came to be here at all. I love that they were welcomed here and that they were given the chances to make all this possible. They were proud to be Canadians and to raise their family here and I am proud because of them.

2. I love our flag. The red and white always made such a bright contrast for a visually impaired person like myself. Maybe my favourite colour is red because of this and my earliest memories of the main symbol of our nation.

3. I love the music Canada has produced. I love artists such as: Sarah McLachlan, Jann Arden, Neil Young, Bryan Adams, Chantal Kreviazuk, Diana Krall, Joni Mitchell, Blue Rodeo, and Alanis Morisette. These musicians represent Canada with their beautiful voices, their moving lyrics, and their distinct sounds. I love them for making me smile, making me cry, and for helping me deal with the hard things in life.

4. I love the literature of my country. I love brilliant writers such as: Lucy Maud Montgomery, Margaret Atwood, and Alice Munro. When Alice won the 2013 Nobel Prize in Literature I was so very proud and I felt honoured to be a woman, a Canadian, and an aspiring writer.

5. I love the land itself. I love how vast and sweeping it is. I love all the open space and our Canadian north. I love how we value nature and all its natural resources. I love the Great Lakes and the St. Laurence River and the oceans surrounding us. I love the Prairies, the Rockies – from the lush forests to the expansive Arctic .

6. I love the places I’ve traveled and the ones I have yet to explore. I love Niagara and its power which awes me every single time I stand at the railing overlooking the Falls. I love Toronto (Ontario’s capital) for its acceptance of all humans (coming off of 2014’s World Pride celebrations) and for the mixture of cultures and countries it houses all in one city. I love the Maritimes out on our east coast and Vancouver Island out on our west. I love having a little piece of another language and culture right in the middle of all the English-speaking provinces. Quebec is where I received my beloved guide dog all those years ago. I hope to see as much of Canada in the years to come as I possibly can.

7. I love the pride Canadians have in this country and as a result, in themselves. Despite the things the rest of the world think about us and the stereotypes that exist; it is true we are kind and welcoming, for the most part, and are known for it all around the world. We do come off quiet and reserved in contrast with some other countries, but as a quiet and reserved person I feel I am living in the right place. In fact, in my opinion these qualities are highly under-rated. We may not treated our native peoples properly over the years, but it is because of them that Canada is what it is today. I hope we are on the way to making it right and to righting the wrongs of our past. We disagree about the environment, politics, and when it comes to Canada’s role in foreign matters and militarily. Sure we have our problems and don’t always agree. We are by no means perfect but these disagreements just make for a successful democracy.

8. I love how this pride extends to our sports teams. Again, I could get kicked out for admitting I am not quite as enamoured with the game of hockey as the rest of the country, but I do love the image of a backyard or pond rink in winter. I have good memories of Saturdays at the arena with my family or late night roaming an empty one with my siblings while my father played. My brother loved playing hockey in his youth and my father loved being a part of a team as goalie. My family are not Leaf fans or any other Canadian team in particular, but what hockey means to our fellow Canadians it means to us too.

9. I prefer baseball over hockey. I love The Toronto Bluejays and no…I am not just saying this because they happened to win today of all days. I remember sitting tight between my father and brother in our basement, on the couch when Joe Carter scored the home runs to win the 1992 and 1993 World Series and I could hear the pride in their voices as they cheered. The Bluejays are our only team here and we have high hopes for them making the playoffs this year. Going to a game at the Sky dome is an experience in fun and an atmosphere of high energy and enthusiasm.

10. And last but certainly not least, I love the health care we are lucky enough to have here. Again, many could voice their complaints and sure nothing is perfect, but I know of what I speak. I am proud of innovators such as: Dr. Frederick Banting and Tommy Douglas for insulin and universal health care. I know nothing in life is completely free, but after all the surgeries, hospital stays, and medicines my brother and I have needed over the years I am thankful for the universal health care we have. I would feel forever guilt-ridden if I had caused my family to end up hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt for the care I required. Not all countries around the world would have payed for all the care me and my brother received over the years and my family would be so far in debt if we weren’t living in Canada.

So there are just ten reasons why I love being Canadian. I will now enjoy a wonderful firework display from the comfort of my front porch with my nephew and be thankful I live where I do and enjoy the freedom and the beauty I enjoy.

Happy Canada Day to my fellow Canadians today and I want to wish my neighbours to the south an early Happy Fourth of July. We all need to be grateful for the blessings we have and celebrate our countries and how lucky we truly are to live where we live.

What are you most thankful for where you live?