So it’s August. Any other year, I’d be paying attention to the smaller things in life: the fact that the local Fry’s is already starting to carry Sam Adams Octoberfest – an insane piece of marketing when the daily temperatures here in the Valley of the Sun are still well over 100 degrees. We have the monsoon which comes and goes, and boy did it come Thursday night, dropping over two inches of rain on us and taking all the dust out of the air from the dust storm we had had on Wednesday night and seemingly dropping it all into the swimming pool. I’ll be having to do a backwash for the second time in a week this weekend.
This year, I’ve got a lot of things going on. Work and “The Client Who Shall Remain Nameless” is back in the picture, the calls from senior execs and the usual dick-heads I thought I had gotten rid of for good all back in the picture. Next week we begin the move of my dad to senior living and the emptying out of the apartment he and my mom shared for fifteen years (how could the time have flown so fast!). He’s also giving up driving, so the turning in of his car needs to be taken care of as well. I’ll be back in Massachusetts in a week’s time with a lot of things to do, and I’m sure it will be both stressful and emotional. Just like this entire year has been. I guess I don’t have as big shoulders as I thought I once did. Maybe that’s something that comes with age. But I’m beyond fried.
Still, the other night I was poking around on YouTube, and as is custom this time of year – for whatever reason – my musical tastes begin to run towards classical music and the music of Gordon Lightfoot. In my view, he’ll never make a better album than 1975’s Cold On The Shoulder, but his 1978 album Endless Wire is a particular favorite, as it brings back all kinds of memories associated with my breaking free as a young adult and getting my first apartment. Two songs on that album in particular stick out as far as quality goes: “Daylight Katy”, which was a minor hit for Gord on the AM radio at that time, and “The Circle Is Small”, a song about infidelity that, for whatever reason, is one of my so-called “life songs”. Maybe because it’s so intensely personal. Maybe because I just love to sing the low harmony in the chorus whenever I hear it. And the lyrics? Well, all I can say is they’re words virtually anyone who has been in the whirlwind of an intense, life-changing relationship that is ending can understand:
It’s alright for some, but not alright for me
When the one that I’m lovin’ slips around
You think it’s fine to do things I cannot see
And you’re doin’ it to me, baby, can’t you see
That I know how it is?I can see it in your eyes and feel it in the way you kiss my lips
I can hear it in your voice whenever we are talking like this
I can see what you believe in when his name is mentioned and I die
I can watch the way you walk, the way you talk, the way you close your eyesIt’s alright for some, but not alright to be
Where the one that I’m lovin’ can’t be found
The city where we live, might be quite large
But the circle is small, why not tell us all, and then all of us will know?I can see it in your eyes and feel it in the way you kiss my lips
I can hear it in your voice whenever we are talking like this
I can see what you believe in when his name is mentioned and I die
I can watch the way you walk, the way you talk, the way you close your eyesIt’s alright to leave, but not alright to lie
When you come home and you can’t say where you’ve been
You think it’s fine to do, things I cannot see
And you’re doin’ it to me, baby, can’t you see, that I know how it is?I can see it in your eyes and feel it in the way you kiss my lips
I can hear it in your voice whenever we are talking like this
I can see what you believe in when his name is mentioned and I die
I can watch the way you walk, the way you talk, the way you close your eyesI can see it in your eyes and feel it in the way you kiss my lips
I can hear it in your voice whenever we are talking like this
I can see what you believe in when his name is mentioned and I die…
The song is especially personal for me because I used a portion of those lyrics on a phone call with my girlfriend at the time after I found out she had been cheating on me. I thought telling her, “I can feel it in my way you kiss my lips. I can hear it in your voice whenever we are talking like this…” were far more artful than the words “Screw you, you bitch!”, because I think I still really loved her at the time. She swore at me and hung up the phone, and that was pretty much that.
So much for art.
Anyways, I think it’s a great song, one of Gord’s best, and one I can listen to over and over again and never get tired of it.
Actually, I’m not sure what the whole purpose of this post is, but that’s sometimes the way blogging goes…
