Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Love, Complicated: Coversongs for the Bittersweet Heart


Part three in a series.

The heart has many hiding places, many meanings: hearts that break and mend, hearts that fail and falter, hearts that fly away after touching ours. This tiny lump of meat, its electric pulse no bigger than a battery, that flutters like a bird to tell us we are alive. And we who are human and claim to know our hearts, we forget that living hurts, and are surprised when it reminds us so often.

This afternoon my children pen store-bought valentines, march around the house demanding that I read the tiny messages on their candy hearts. While I try to explain the metaphoric meaning of every X and O to the wee one just beginning to recognize letters as sounds, not symbols, the older one sounds out the words, struggling to make sense of these little phrases we use to cue and coo, to bless and hurt and curse and caress each other.

One day, I think, they will understand everything. It breaks my heart, even now. And it lifts it, too, to know that they will know so much love, enough to feel its ever-impending loss. Love like a cinnamon heart — so bright and tempting, we forget how much it burns, even as it sweetens our tongues.

Some songs with nothing in common, then, save perhaps the most powerful metaphor we share with everything alive. Songs of the heart, written for lovers, wives, exes, children, selves. Something for everyone, no matter how scared or scarred, how heavy or light our own hearts might be.

For in the end, there is no joy without the context of sorrow, no loss without the awareness of what once was. Every heart is bittersweet, and every love song, too. And so we are never alone.

 

As always here on Cover Lay Down, we encourage you to show your love by following the above links to label-sponsored and artist-preferred stores and sources. Because groove, as they say, is in the heart.


Previously on Valentine’s Day 2008, and now with all mp3s live for a limited time only:

Category: Valentines Day Coverfolk

3 Responses to “Love, Complicated: Coversongs for the Bittersweet Heart”

  1. Friday Morning Free Music: Aww, Valentine’s Day! « Steve’s Media Blog
    February 13th, 2009 at 9:24 am

    [...] Love, Complicated: Coversongs for the Bittersweet Heart [...]
  2. Slowcoustic » New on the ‘Nets this Week
    February 14th, 2009 at 2:18 pm

    [...] Lay Down had a post for the “Bittersweet Heart” - if not only a couple of days early.  First on the Scene over there I guess!!  Always a good [...]
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    [...] Shawn Colvin and Loudon Wainwright III cover A Heart Needs a Home [...]

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