Stumped by Lyrics
When I was in college, I used to drive around in my mom's white 1991 Toyota Corolla. When you're stuck in the middle of Manila's Friday afternoon traffic, you really need your wits about you. Those wits need to be extra sharp when you're dealing with a manual transmission car. My music collection has never been large, so I had the radio on. The song was something I've only that one time. And that's really a bummer, because there are only two lines to the lyrics that I remember:
You were my husband, I was your wife
But that was in another life
What struck me about the words were that it was a man singing those words. Gender bending at its finest, were my first thoughts. Then I started listening some more. And then I fell completely in love with the song.
The rest of the words are kind of fuzzy and disjointed. Words like brother and sister , I'm pretty sure are there. The rest of it, are floating syllables in a head full of words.
The gist I remember is: true love finds you, regardless of time and space, with a good heaping of reincarnation thrown in. How the people you love come back to you in different ways. Sometimes you're best friends. Other times, you're brother and sister. Your gender switches. Through it all, being with someone is not what you expect it to be, but it's what you have for a particular lifetime. And it's okay.
It's like being in a dream, seeing everything clearly for the first time. You can feel the breeze blowing past you eyelashes. It's there, though you don't notice it until you pay attention. And then it fades away just a quickly as a three-minute song.
Beauty held in the mind is ephemeral. Only you remember it in a particular way. When you're lucky, you get to share it with someone. So that even if you remember parts of it, the other person remembers the other parts for you. Then, when you talk about it, you get to share in the beauty of a moment again. I had no such luck for this song. I was alone in the car.
When I told my best friend about the lyrics, she said she'd never heard the song. Though that's not really surprising. We're best friends, but our music tastes are worlds apart. She even went so far as to suggest it was all in my head. There are times I agree with her. Over the years, I've periodically searched for these lyrics. It's been more than fifteen years. I'm still looking.
Sometimes, I try to rewrite the song from memory, the lyrics anyway. As I've gotten older, I haven't been able to add to the two lines I've written down so far. I do get to write a different poem using them. But I'm always unhappy about it because it's not the lyrics I remember. Maybe someday I'll get it right.
You were my husband, I was your wife
But that was in another life
What struck me about the words were that it was a man singing those words. Gender bending at its finest, were my first thoughts. Then I started listening some more. And then I fell completely in love with the song.
The rest of the words are kind of fuzzy and disjointed. Words like brother and sister , I'm pretty sure are there. The rest of it, are floating syllables in a head full of words.
The gist I remember is: true love finds you, regardless of time and space, with a good heaping of reincarnation thrown in. How the people you love come back to you in different ways. Sometimes you're best friends. Other times, you're brother and sister. Your gender switches. Through it all, being with someone is not what you expect it to be, but it's what you have for a particular lifetime. And it's okay.
It's like being in a dream, seeing everything clearly for the first time. You can feel the breeze blowing past you eyelashes. It's there, though you don't notice it until you pay attention. And then it fades away just a quickly as a three-minute song.
Beauty held in the mind is ephemeral. Only you remember it in a particular way. When you're lucky, you get to share it with someone. So that even if you remember parts of it, the other person remembers the other parts for you. Then, when you talk about it, you get to share in the beauty of a moment again. I had no such luck for this song. I was alone in the car.
When I told my best friend about the lyrics, she said she'd never heard the song. Though that's not really surprising. We're best friends, but our music tastes are worlds apart. She even went so far as to suggest it was all in my head. There are times I agree with her. Over the years, I've periodically searched for these lyrics. It's been more than fifteen years. I'm still looking.
Sometimes, I try to rewrite the song from memory, the lyrics anyway. As I've gotten older, I haven't been able to add to the two lines I've written down so far. I do get to write a different poem using them. But I'm always unhappy about it because it's not the lyrics I remember. Maybe someday I'll get it right.