If there’s an aspect of my life that brings out the inner-writer in me, it’s my love life.  For reasons beyond my comprehension, my search for love often is the manifestation of a narrative structure that places high value on fate, loss, love and the passion that welds the three together.

Because of that, my relationships often become vast romantic tragedies whose plot lines don’t reveal themselves until after the relationship’s first act.  There’s something in my mind that feels that love is not something one can feel until it is stripped away from them – whatever that means.  I’m probably not alone in the way I process this, after all, Hollywood has crafted mines full of cinematic gold based on that simple concept.  Yet, it still pangs me as I romanticize the past and current flames of my life all because of some narrative draw that, while I’m aware of, I can’t quite control.

That brings me to the Bob Dylan song “One of us must Know (sooner or later).”  Off of one of my favorite records (whose songs will probably all eventually make it into my personal Music of my Mind meme), this song captures a moment in my romantic tragedies – the juxtaposition of apology and longing – that I have now closely (and incorrectly) associated with love.

The beginning of “One of us Must Know (Sooner or later)” captures a sort of structured personal history pretty well:

“I didn’t mean to treat you so bad
You shouldn’t take it so personal
I didn’t mean to make you so sad
You just happened to be there, that’s all
When I saw you say “goodbye” to your friends and smile
I thought that it was well understood
That you’d be comin’ back in a little while
I didn’t know that you were sayin’ “goodbye” for good”

The Paul Griffin piano dances between Dylan’s apologetic lyrics.  “I didn’t mean..” Dylan begins, with a clarity to the normal raspy timbre of his voice.  That final sentence, “I didn’t know that you were sayin’ ‘goodbye’ for good” hits me every time.  As someone who has decent success in predicting the behavior of those around him, those realizations when a moment that seemed so benign, yet ultimately were monumental, seem that much more powerful.  As the chorus builds, Griffin’s piano overpowers Dylan’s voice – even as he is coming to his a bit too late conclusions of this failed romance.

The hindsight infused chorus tugs on these romantic narratives I’ve constructed for myself.  Dylan is both apologetic and confident – taking the unemotional stance that he understands that she was simply doing what she was “supposed to do,” while coming back with a simple, yet powerful, fact that he “really did try to get close to you.”  This is the chorus of my romantic past.  My inability to illustrate just how much I open up plagues me, and is often cited, as the reason the relationships don’t work out.

As I sit here listening to the song on repeat, trying to capture the floating thoughts of emotion that the song brings out in me – I wonder if my attraction to the song is because of these parallels or are these parallels in my life because of this romantic structure infused in me because of the song?

As the character Rob Gordon states in the movie High Fidelity:

What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?

Over the course of my adult life, I have undergone so many changes.  Some were subtle, some were more obvious, but all the while I’ve continued to grow in so many ways.  I enjoy that.   Yet, a song like this illustrates all the growing that I still have left to do.  I’m punch-drunk on these fabricated emotional narratives that generally bring discomfort to my life and the lives of others.  I hope some day, this personal reflection on this song marks the beginning of a period of growth – rather than a continuing theme.  I guess only hindsight will tell.