a new love

It’s been a long time coming, this newfound love. I have to say I wasn’t really searching. That’s precisely when they say it happens, you know, when you’re not looking. The need and pain were there somewhere in the background beating out an urge that I barely recognized until it was fulfilled.

It took me a while to settle into it, the fit always a little snug at first and the instinct to push away is always greater in me than the instinct to pull closer. I like change. I like new. I just don’t like new all over me, suffocating my space and time. So, I waded in slowly until now this love has overwhelmed me and it’s like air.

It’s The Postal Service and I’m obsessed.

I’ve given the album to K. and J. and forced them to listen to all last weekend. It consumed my drive up and down from D.C. and it has trumped NPR on my car radio to and from work. That is HUGE. Nothing trumps NPR. That’s how I knew this was love. I’m in love with a new band and I’m all giddy. I haven’t felt this way since, well, U2 when I was 16. It’s that deep people. It’s love to the core.

I told K. that there was one song that describes my life and I just couldn’t in any way write it better than The Postal Service did. I told her that it’s about a boy who is waiting in a London underground station when her realizes he’s been looking for love that was like a movie and he says that he wants to believe in love and he wants “life in every word to the extent that it’s absurd.” I just can’t do any better that. It’s my life and he wrote it.

I then I tried to play the song for Kristin, telling her that this song was my life and that she had to hear it. I searched through the songs on my car stereo not knowing its number and not recognizing the beginning beats. I landed on track 7 convinced and that it was the right song and we sat there, in my car, parked and ready to get out, but waiting for the song that is my life to play. We waited for 40 seconds. “It’s taking so long to begin,” I said. “Well, it’s your life,” said Kristin. And then when the words came, it was the wrong song. We got out of the car. I couldn’t handle the reality of that moment.

Here are the words to the song that is my life. And you can listen to it here.

Clark gable

I was waiting for a cross-town train in the London underground
When it struck me that I’ve been waiting since birth to find
A love that would look and sound like a movie so I changed
My plans and rented a camera and a van and then I called you
"I need you to pretend that we are in love again" and you agreed to

I want so badly to believe that "there is truth, that love is real"
And I want life in every word to the extent that it's absurd
I greased the lens and framed the shot using a friend as my stand-in
The script it called for rain but it was clear that day so we faked it
The marker snapped and I yelled, "quiet on the set"
And then called "action!"
And I kissed you in a style that Clark Gable would have admired
(I thought it classic)

I want so badly to believe that "there is truth, that love is real"
And I want life in every word to the extent that it's absurd
I know you're wise beyond your years, but do you ever get the fear
That your perfect verse is just a lie you tell yourself to help you get by?

-The Postal Service