I always listen to music while drawing - well actually I always listen to music unless I am doing something else that preempts the auditory channel; watching a video, or engaging in conversation - stuff like that. But when drawing I make specific musical choices. Usually I opt for instrumental works, or works like opera sung in a language I do not understand. Otherwise the words seem to get in the way - they sort of block the images that are trying to make their way onto the paper or the computer screen.
But there is an exception to this rule of thumb. When I have completed the “cartoon” version of the drawing - the black and white outlines and designs within the outlines; when all that is left to do is choose what colors go where - I can listen to “songs with lyrics that I know very well.” It is not surprising that there are more love songs in that category than probably any other genre. I suppose if you want to slice the big musical “songs with lyrics I know” pie into really fine pieces you could find some “non-love song” categories e.g. sea shanties, work songs, hymns, lullabies, parodies, children’s songs, etc. But if you sift through my Pandora selections - which is my “go to” app for music - you will find more love songs than anything else. That may be reflective of the fact that if you were to ask for all hopeless romantics to raise their hands, I bet I could beat Hermione Granger to the draw. (Did I mention I am re-reading the Harry Potter books?)
While working on the “tale of two tongues” images that I recently shared with you, completing the areas that sort of turned out looking like Aztec glyphs gave me a lot of hours to listen to love songs. And I found myself reflecting on a particular facet of the genre: the end of a love song. I realize, as Billy Collins points out in The Great American Poem, that one of the benefits poetry has over prose, novels, etc., is that you don’t have to parse hundreds of pages to get to the important kernel of the work. So how love song's lyrics - given that “lyrics” are simply poems put to music - end is a legitimate area of critical reflection.
So then - on to the ending of love songs. While there are plenty of “hurtin’” love songs - those “somebody done somebody wrong songs.” There are a surprising number of “things turn out fine love songs.” Those moments when the lovers ride off into the sunset. “The hands that once held a six-gun, are holding their baby tonight,” etc. Find your own favorite examples, there are plenty of “happy love songs” out there. Disney and Broadway are fertile fields for these. But even in these happy examples what follows after the ride out into the sunset is rarely if ever addressed. There are some - Kisses Sweeter than Wine, comes to mind, but not many others.
Country music in particular thrives on the “bad news love song;” “He stopped loving her today,” “Bury us both deep, and maybe we’ll find peace, And pulling the trigger, she fell cross the dead cowboy’s chest.” “Somewhere near Salinas, lord, I let her slip away.” But even in Country we can find some “happy love songs. “So I walked away from the hangin’ tree, And my own true love, she walked with me.” And that strange “happy dying love song” Running Bear, “As their hands touched, and their lips met, the raging river pulled them down, Now they’ll always be together in their happy hunting ground.” But here too we never learn how the lovers - particularly the dead ones - deal with any prolonged happiness. Music stops. Story over.
So love songs, neither happy nor sad, rarely manage to tell us what happens after the lovers ride off into the sunset. What happens when the kids get the mumps? What happens when the horse dies? the cattle stampede? the bank won’t extend the loan? one of them gets called off to war? the crops fail? one of them “meets someone”? etc., etc.
But, in truth, “tough love” isn’t the job of love songs. Even the sad ones are supposed to make us feel good - sometimes in a “hurts so good” kind of way. “The phone that rings at midnight ain’t got nothing good to say. She just called to tell you she’s a thousand miles away. Long gone this time.”
So if you want to seriously suffer, to learn all the sordid details of lives and nations falling apart, you might better advised to read a novel, Tolstoy perhaps, or even, shudder, watch the news. Love songs, thankfully, point us in another direction.
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