Song and Love

October 9, 2006

Since the dawn of rock and roll teenagers have learned to play guitar to attract the opposite sex. In eighth grade I went out with a ninth-grade girl. No way a boy does that without a cherry-red Harmony electric. A guitar overcomes a lot of personality quirks, but it doesn’t trump a senior with a car. I was devastated when Christine broke up with me, but my first song came out of that heartbreak and it helped with the healing. Although my newly found status as a songwriter was no threat to a guy with a driver's license, it did put me ahead of mere guitar players.

Performing in coffee houses kept the social life active through college, but writing also allowed me to explore feelings, I got to know myself better. Soon after graduation I was married. Tragically, it was time to grow up, get a job, put my guitar in the closet.

Twenty years later I was a vice president for a division of a major record company, wishing I'd never stopped playing. I bought a couple of classic, vintage guitars, dusted off my old Martin too. I rediscovered songwriting. I took guitar lessons, attended workshops, I wrote my wife a couple of sappy love songs. She said that’s nice, then bought me a pair of headphones. We’re divorced now, but the issue was much larger than me and those guitars.

Now that I’m single again, writing songs takes on a new dimension. It’s not the means to score women it was in my misspent youth, rather an additional way to express myself. Recently I studied with Rosanne Cash and Jimmie Dale Gilmore. They taught me how to dig deep for inspiration, find serendipity. I learned the nuts and bolts too.

Marshall McLuhan said the medium is the message. Songs are potent vehicles, but they are subject to misinterpretation. Sometimes when you write a song for someone, the result isn’t as you expect. I learned this lesson the hard way back in high school.

In tenth grade I had the hots for Donna Duclose, but she was going out with Alex Savage, an eleventh grader with a Camaro. One night Donna and I hung out behind the gym and started kissing. I wrote What Do You Do?. I made her a cassette copy:

What do you do
When your mind is confused
You don’t know what’s going on
But you know you’re the fuse

Savage got a hold of the tape. He drove over in that fast car with a buddy. They burned a couple of wheelies in front of my parent’s house. They jumped out of the Camaro and beat me up. That was the end of me and Donna.

Almost thirty years later, with several years of so-called serious songwriting under my belt, I put my new found craft to work. My marriage was on the rocks and I wrote Going for a Ride: in an attempt to get things back on track:

I want to feel like I did that time we met
When the wind blew through our hair
We drove all day with the top rolled down
Like new found millionaires

My wife never heard it because she left me for another guy before I could play it for her. No song was going to get us back from that.

The divorce wasn’t pretty, but it provided a great source of material for writing. My first few dates after two decades worth of marriage were a disaster, but eventually I met someone that was worthy of a song. Gail and I had similar tastes in music and during the holidays I gave her a recording of a tune she inspired. The song wasn’t for her, but that was a subtle distinction she failed to grasp despite my awkward explanation. She heard it once and fell in love. I blame that damn song for ruining what was a good situation. We both knew it was too soon for me to get into something deep, but I should’ve known better than to write that song.

I’ve written several others for women since, but I’m more cautious about sharing. Maybe She Loves Me was about Nadine, my yoga instructor. I really liked her and I thought she dug me too, but she refused to go out, saying she didn't date students. We had great chemistry, a real connection, so I wrote this:

Maybe she loves me
But she don't know it
Maybe she loves me
Just can't show it -- maybe that's it
Maybe she loves me
But she can't risk a lot
Maybe she loves me
Maybe not

I never played it for Nadine because I valued our friendship, I loved her class. I didn’t want to jeopardize any of that. Today we're still good friends. Looking back on how things were, it’s clear that if she'd heard that song, the answer would've been: Not.

Cool Things Down was about a fiery relationship last year. Jules and I burned like a fourth of July sparkler, it was hot, passionate, short-lived. This was inspired by our first fight:

And when you hear the sound of thunder
Don’t run away
Baby, give it one more day
Cause when it rains
It will cool things down

Nothing could have cooled down that affair, Jules ran at the first crack of thunder.

Last week I wrote I Can’t Fall. It was inspired by Sara, a beautiful songwriter I met this summer at a workshop. She's smart, funny, warm, she has an angelic voice and plays a great honky-tonk guitar. We have so much in common that it scared me, but it also gave me an idea for a song. I took a gamble and sent an mp3 to her via email (she doesn’t live locally).

I Can't Fall is about the fear of exposing the heart, that feeling of vulnerability when you’re unsure if the other person is feeling the same. I probably shouldn’t have sent this, the love pundits would say it’s too soon. And yet I know Sara likes me, but this could cause her to put on the breaks. Oh well, it’s too late now:



I Can’t Fall

She’s a sunset over an ocean
She’s the home coming queen
She’s a sports car with a rag top
She’s the sound of a mountain stream
But I’m afraid to open up
To let her touch my heart, I can’t fall…

I’m a forest after the fire
I’m the eye of a hurricane
And I have walked a thousand miles
To avoid love’s pain
Cause I’m afraid to open up
To let her touch my heart, I can’t fall…

There’s a second chance
For broken hearts that still believe
It’s a simple dance
Anyone can learn this dance of love

She’s a sunset over an ocean
She’s the home coming queen
And she’d be worth it, of that I’m certain
She’d be a star on any team
But I’m afraid to open up
To let her touch my heart, I can’t fall…
If I let her in
I’ll fall in love


The song was supposed to let Sara know I thought she was terrific, that despite my baggage, I still believed 'Love' was possible. She liked it, but had a few melodic suggestions (that’s the dynamic of going out with a fellow songwriter). They were good ideas and I took them on board. But things felt different between us. She called less frequently, and when we did talk, she seemed preoccupied. Long distance relationships are never easy. I thought the song would boost her confidence to take a chance, but she pulled back. Did the song accelerate the inevitable? Maybe.


Some people believe getting a girl is a lot like fishing -- you’ve got to know how to handle that reel: bring ‘em in too fast or too slow and you’ll lose the catch. When I was a kid, love songs were an essential tool in my bait-and-tackle box. We talked of catching women the way Hemingway would write about the chase for marlin off the coast of Cuba.

There’s no doubt that writing love songs requires that same deft hand of a fisherman, but nowadays for me, getting a girl isn’t sport, it's certainly no game. And yet all too often it feels as if it is. I get sucked into playing with no idea what the rules are. But I’m not alone, I don’t think anyone knows. This engagement between two people is haphazard, with undetermined boundaries, the playing field is littered with causalities, and both sides all too often walk away losers.

I might not have a clue on how to catch fish, or play this game of love, but at least the songwriting provides an outlet, a means to cope with the joy and heartache of relationships.