Songs and love are something that I talk about a lot – often together.  Looking back on my eclectic music collection, I see many of the similar songs that I once used as inspiration in my more naive and blissful days.  I can’t replicate all those mix tapes from back in the day – made with Skeff, in college, and many times after – but I can write about a few of my songs that might be a bit off the radar from the conventional mix-tape.

Lover Lay Down – Dave Matthews Band

It’s hard to say that this song was under the radar, but it definitely wasn’t one of Dave’s top hits, coming on his breakout release “Under the Table and Dreaming.” For anyone growing up in the 1990′s, Dave Matthews represents the sweet saccharine songs that wowed girls and either inspired boys and made them run for the hills. I was inspired – the hopeless romantic long before I really knew what that was all about. Listening to this song for the first time in a long time (a decade, perhaps?), I can’t help but enjoy it’s simple beauty. My tastes in music may have evolved past Dave Matthews by the turn of the century, but he still knows how to write a good love song….

Forever – Ben Harper

Maybe the cynical streak is something I was born with – or at least, embedded with due to parental divorce and a uncomfortable adolescence. Either way, this song made it’s way onto so many mix tapes that I almost think it was a single – even though it definitely wasn’t. Ben would actually make many appearances on these sort of mix tapes – with songs like “Steal my Kisses” off of “Burn to Shine” being the most memorable.

Can’t Hardly Wait – The Replacement

This was always a classic staple on a mix tape – even though I’m a much bigger ‘Mats fan today than I ever was back then. It’s a classic. Not much to really write about it….

Luna – The Smashing Pumpkins

The Smashing Pumpkins were the hot band in High School. One of my favorite albums growing up was Siamese Dream. While most girls got into them during the Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness string of hits, I loved them earlier. This song was my way of being “cool” – putting a sweet song from a band that they already loved. It’s a classic mix tape move – one that I probably would still do, even if the song selection has improved.

Lullaby (Goodnight my Angel) – Billy Joel

Sure – the song is written about his daughter. My younger self even knew that. Still, I figured most girls wouldn’t and I kept this song to be one of the key closers on any good romantic mix tape. I’m not a big Billy Joel fan, but he still writes beautiful music that appeals to the masses. In other words, the perfect closer to a mix tape…

Of course, making a mix tape is a lot more than picking a few songs and putting them together. It’s about flow and balance and all those stuff that I’ve written about a million times. I just wanted to relive some of the thoughts I used to have around making tapes. Now, with my love life a lot more complicated and unpredictable, sometimes being able to just make a tape is exactly where I need to be…..

One of my favorite aspects of blogging is that I can not fully cede to the revisionist nature of human memory.  As time shifts, we remember things different.  We often call this “perspective” and we feel that we’ve reached some form of truth.  But perspective is merely a view or vantage point on a situation – something that constantly changes.  Memories, therefore, go through this mental form of telephone – getting configured and reconfigured with each new perspective until the final note is often not very similar to the original.  With blogs, I see – often in explicit form – the way I was feeling about certain things at the time.  This makes those times when you question why things happen, what could have been, and all the tidal movements in between make a bit more sense because you’re chronically life in the moment, rather than letting perspective pervert it.

Life, invariably, will move on.   While our perspective on things change, ultimately I can always come back to these vignettes of my life and toast to these passages that stake claim into the true feelings I had at the time.  The true feelings that make bittersweet dates like March 1st ring a bit emptier because all those things that you waited for and wanted, finally have reached a point to where they are graspable – except they are lost to you, forever shelved in the imaginary land of what could have been….

On March 1, I will toast to it…..and hopefully, just move on….

And they adored the dragon, which gave power to the beast: and they adored the beast, saying: Who is like to the beast? and who shall be able to fight with him?

A few nights earlier, similar scene – different company, I sat honestly struggling with explaining certain aspects of my past and current relationships.  I feel that there is this pull to put definition into things that can not be defined – they are sick of the ephemeral and put rules and restrictions in order to avoid it.  And, as my previous posts illustrate, I am not absolved of that sin myself.  But, as I sat there want for words, I desired to explain everything I could about relationships.  I told them that you couldn’t force relationships.  I said you should just do what you want to do in the moment, because of the fact that most relationships fail.  I was called bitter.  I see beauty in the failure of relationships.  I see something deeply profound…

“The Beast and Dragon, Adored” is a reference, ultimately, to the apocalypse.  While the term is often used in conjunction with the end of the world, its true meaning is “a disclosure to certain privileged persons of something hidden from the majority of mankind.”  Isn’t that what love is?  When you go back to the greek origins of the word, you get “The lifting of the veil” which I can’t help but make parallels to bridal traditions.   I can’t help if I am drawn into a world that balances destruction with romance.  I can’t help it that I see Atlanta burning and I think “Gone with the Wind.”  Or the sinking of The Titanic and think of Leo.   I’ve been conditioned.  Even my conditioned has been conditioned.  And, as I evolve out of my selfish decade of my 20′s, I can’t help but wonder if this is a handicap or a realist bent that will allow me to appreciate the fruits of my laborious love life come to fruition.  I guess this will serve as my testament, my Book of Revelations….

One of my many quirks is the fact that I google the ending to everything – movies, books, television shows – I can not stand to wait to figure out what will happen next.  That, along with my favorite french saying “Je sais l’avenir par coeur” (via Paul Valery) illustrates what I want out of life: I want to know how it ends in intimate detail.  I want to know the future by heart.

Since you can not “know” the future, I tried to impose my Will on it.  I have a very strong Will.  I feel that I can accomplish anything and, ultimately, when I set my mind to things – they happen.  With that Will, I tried to create a scenario where I knew the future – in particular my love life.  The Will is strong and I almost made it happen.  When it didn’t, I found myself befuddled.  How could I not get what I wanted?  How could I not make something I felt such powerful passion for reality?

I was talking to Sarah today and, as per usual, her somewhat detached observational nature made me start to put into words the things that I have been feeling.  I have been reveling in the uncomfortable nature of not “knowing” the future.

That uncomfortableness made me realize a lot of things about how sometimes you can’t just get things because you want them – especially when love is involved.  For an average looking guy, I have not faced rejection that often.  I have successfully pursued many girls that were far out of my league.  And I did this with the confidence that, if I tried hard enough, nothing could stop me.   My mindset always was, as I’ve written before: I do know the future by heart, because the future resides within me.  My Will creates the future as I want it….

With love, however – it’s different.  Love shouldn’t be the powerful Will of another causing submission.  It should be the interwoven passion of two people.  Back when Sarah and I dated, she did one of the most romantic things that a woman has ever done for me.  I arrived at her house after work to a note that said, “Go to the place where we had our first date….”  I went, where I was greeted by more clues that lead me on a scavenger hunt throughout the months of our relationship.  When I finally gathered all the clues, I was directed to her place where she was there – cooking for me.  We had a nice dinner and I have never felt more loved in my life.  She illustrated her passion in me by going above and beyond.  Our passions were aligned and that lead to our relatively successful relationship.

Looking back over things, I realize that if you spend too much time trying to create the future – you never will receive the affection in return.   Over the course of years, I never did get anything in return.  There were gifts of all sizes sent to whatever location she was in – even ones that never arrive because of Italian customs.  There were password protected Posterous accounts that had pictures of every time I thought of her – a site with over 300 posts in 4 months that she never even bothered to check once.  There was so much passion and Will to make something happen that, l forgot to even see if there was passion being returned.  There wasn’t and there is really no one to blame other than myself.

So, with this introspection, I realize that I can no longer google my future to determine what will happen.  There’s no “George G Smith Jr’s future is….” blog post out there that will determine it.  No image search that will identify future lovers.  Ultimately, it’s each and every moment – filled with the horrifically beautiful “unknown.”   I think I’m finally ready to let go of the need to “know” the future and just sit back and enjoy the present…

I couldn’t help but suddenly feel the intense desire to search the song that is describing my current feelings.  There have been a lot of songs that I have been listening to lately that are close.  For example, the line,  “If I could do just one near perfect thing I’d be happy /They’d write it on my grave, or when they scattered my ashes / On second thoughts I’d rather hang about and be there with my best friend / If she wants me” hit close to home, but the song overall doesn’t capture things completely.

When Bob Dylan was writing Blonde on Blonde in the Chelsea Hotel, I wonder if it was raining out.  The cliche cinematic version in my head has him at his typewriter, smoking cigarettes and pushing them into an all too full ashtray.  He is maniacal at the keyboard, the pounding keystrokes balancing the lightning speed of thought and the machines physical constrictions. This is the scene I have in my head when I imagine Dylan sitting there writing these songs from my favorite album.  This is the album I listen to when I’m feeling blue.  So why is it shocking that it’s two Dylan songs that capture what I am feeling:

Sitting in my apartment, looking down on Loisaida Avenue, the window slightly ajar, and the cool air filling my all-too warm room, the only light in the room is this monitor and the flicker of a candle that I lit a few hours ago – and that will go out by the time I finish writing this post.  In a bit of reverse engineering, I’m trying to capture the muse using the setting Dylan had while listening to the finished product.  I’m trying to echo that moment from almost a half century ago so that I, too, can create something from feeling the way that I feel he felt.

It’s not working, but at the very least – I have the music.

For the past sixth months, I rarely went more than a few hours without talking to her.  Via text, twitter, and IM – we would keep each other up to date on the very minutia of each passing moment of time.  When night time came, we would have skype dates where we would talk about our days, share our successes, and learn from our failures.  She was absolutely perfect. She was my best friend. I knew, without a doubt in my heart, that I wanted to spend the rest of my life with her.

Of course, life wasn’t without its share of pratfalls and distance was not kind to us.  First it was Albany, NY and Boulder, CO.  Then Houston, Tx and Boulder.  Then New York City and Houston.  No matter what happened, we just seemed to not be able to get our cards in line.  So we dated other people.  We still talked as much as before – if not increasing the frequency as our conversations became integral to our daily lives.  I would tell her that it’s all part of the plan.  I would tell her that we belonged together.  She started to agree.  She started to believe.

She visited me a few weeks ago.  We spent the weekend together and, ultimately, achieved a level of intimacy that we never shared before.  I told her “I love you.”  She said those same words back to me.  We frolicked in the blissful hues of young love.  We talked of future plans – her work was bringing her to Albany again.  We would be closer than ever before.  We would be able to give this a shot when she moved here.  We talked of planning – weekend visits, summer in the city; intoxicating each other in all things beautiful about love and sex and everything in between.

Sometime between our last phone call and the break up call, things changed.  She told me she was no longer planning on moving to Albany.  She told me she no longer shared the same vision.  She told me she met someone else.

Now, I don’t want to wax poetic about someone so fickle that they can tell someone that they love them and a few weeks later change their entire plans around just like that.  It’s not worth it and, ultimately, neither is she.  Still, there’s something very beautiful about settling into the soft soliloquies of sadness.  The focus not being the girl, or fairy tale plans aborted, but the emotional power that ultimately fuels us all.

I told only a handful of girls that I loved them during the past decade.  The only relationship of those that didn’t end in disaster is the one whose shirt pattern adorns the background of this blog’s header.  Sarah’s the only one whose breakup wasn’t because of lack of trust, other people, or the thousands of other things that leave people crippled and broken hearted.  Ours was simply circumstance – as she moved to Washington D.C. and out of my life.  Ironically, she lives 5 blocks south of me now.  What I learned from our recent retrospective talks is that relationships run their course.  It’s what you take away from them that matter.   Right now, I wonder what I’ll be taking away from this one…

So, single life in NYC will be interesting.  I mean – technically I was “single” which is the same designation that I have had for years.  Yet, this girl was ever-present.  My growing love for her was constant and, ultimately, got in the way of other relationship possibilities along the way.  So, now unencumbered except for a slightly sullen heart, I wonder what the world beyond has in store.  I’m a hopeless romantic with a hardened cynical streak.  I wonder which part will get reinforced during the next few months. Will I be bitter and not believe in true love anymore or will I be able to be Paul Varjack looking for his Holly Golightly?  And what if I can’t find Cat?  It’s raining…  These are the things that I am thinking about now.

Obviously – I’m close to the rambling stage now.  I’ve been up all night and I really don’t see much chance for sleep tonight.  Which is fine – I usually can run off endorphins for a day or two.  Tuesday or Wednesday might be tough.  I’m sure I’ll put together some more random musings over the next few day.  I find it apropos that the minute I decide I am going to be more authentic and real on this blog is the minute I have an emotional event in my life kick the writer in me into “confessional mode.”  I guess, ultimately, I took the expressway back to being a blogger.  A real one.  One of my favorite tweets ever was from my friend Erin.  She wrote, “I’m not a wuss.  I’m just sensitive.  I will kick your ass.  I will just cry doing it.”  I’m at the point where I don’t care if my emotional thoughts get published to the masses.  I am who I am and I’m comfortable with it.  These are just my thoughts.  Let me know your thoughts in the comments below…

As people start using more and more technology – it is as if everyone is on social networking sites: from Twitter to Brightkite to Foursquare.  All three provide an interesting conundrum – knowing what someone is doing when you’re not with them.  The latter two even directly provide the location.  Modern romance, at it’s heart, is a series of Olympic level challenges balancing the insecurities of the two individuals involved.  Does she like me?  Will she like me if I come on too strong?  Should I call?  All these questions are all relatively common to the picture of dating as a whole.   Technology added more hurdles – what is the meaning behind a text message?  A Facebook “poke” (remember those)? A Twitter DM.  I know where she’s hanging out, if I go there will it appear I’m coming on too strong?  Should I stay or should I go?  Question upon question upon question…

Where do these new technologies fall in the rules of courtship?  Should the rules be evaluated?  Were there ever really rules – or just a series of phrases given to the misguided to try to establish a feeling of control in a world where chance and timing have as much to do with success as the other variables we hold in a much higher regard.

Obviously I don’t really know the answers, but I do know it will be fun to find out.   After all, all this technology will ultimately provide me a record of how I meet the woman I spend the rest of my life with.  The narrative is never truly in our control and only hindsight will really provide any answers.  Still, sometimes I wish it was just as easy as typing into Google “George Smith’s Future Wife” and finding the answer.
Then again – maybe it will be:

Be sure to check out Alana on Techyness.com and also the Millennio.us podcast!

I was just in a relationship for about a month and a half. It wasn’t a very serious one – but it ended on Sunday. I had a hard time understanding how I felt. In many sense, it was a month and a half – that’s nothing. I’ve dated girls for much longer. I’ve had casual relationships last longer. So what was so weird about this one?

I guess it was that I was ready to dive right in. I was bouncing on the proverbial diving board, ready to take the plunge in what would have been the first relationship I have had in a while. Things were good. She expressed reservation but her actions seemed to indicate there was a future. And as I was there, bouncing, bouncing, bouncing – someone shouted “THERE’S NO WATER IN THE POOL!” I stopped. My body twisted up awkwardly. But I stayed on. Things felt weird as I tried to regain my balance – but I can look down and be thankful that I didn’t crack my head in the empty pool.

Relationships come and go. This one never really got started and it’s bittersweet as I miss the thoughts of “what could have been.” The reality is that none of that stuff could have been. She wasn’t who I thought she was. She was troubled, co-dependent on someone else, and lost. But then again, so was I at 23. It’s not a judgment on who she was, but a comment on the most important thing about relationships: timing.

In the end, maybe I have learned a bit more about myself. I have had an interesting 48 hours – during which I haven’t slept. I still feel those twinges of awkwardness, the longing to communicate with someone or something about this roller coaster of emotion. But, overall, I am happy. I didn’t dive in, but I was ready to. I haven’t been able to say that in a long time…