My eyes can't look at you any other way

#940 - Detlef Schrempf :: Band of Horses

“So take it as a song,
or a lesson to learn,
and sometime soon be better than you were.
If you say you’re gonna go,
then be careful,
and watch how you treat every living soul.”

Band of Horses was a slow developed love for me. For a good long while I knew, and loved, No One’s Gonna Love You, but anything else I’d heard seemed to disappear into the background. After a little time, though, I started paying atttention, and the background music began to pull me in.

This song, especially, drew me in and mesmerized me.

It is a stunningly beautiful, simple, and lyrically moving song. There is a bittersweet feeling to it that seems to make me quietly melancholic when listening, but also hopeful in that way that music seems to only be able to convey. That feeling that one is not alone in their emotions and fears, hopes and dreams, and sadness.

Sometimes music understands more than anything else.

Anything to make you smile

"All Cats Are Black"
keep art alive :: art by Joshua Petker

"But someone,
they could have warned you,
when things start splitting at the seams and now
the whole thing's tumbling down.

But no one's ever gonna love you more than I do."

Nobody's Gonna Love You :: Band Of Horses

The unexpected moments come, silently pouncing from around a dark corner into the middle of what seems so calm and clear - what is it they say, there is always a calm before the storm? I like to think it is just our insecurities taking a leap into center stage, pushing us over to the floor temporarily because no one is supposed to be this happy. I like to think it is all made up of doubts and worry, mixed thoroughly and frosted with a light touch of vulnerability - a cake served up when neither of us are hungry (but we sure are afraid, aren't we?)

So, what do we do? There are no rule books for this? No warning lights across the sky, or horoscope predicted blue prints to follow. Sure we have our friends to dispel their perspectives and experiences, all that sage advice that we half-listen to, but is it what is true for us? Our intuition gets tied-up and blindfolded during these moments, drowned out by the off-kilter chorus of internal nay-sayers and you don't deserve this voices. Somewhere though, somewhere deep inside, we know - we hold our own truths and definitions of love - its in there.

But the shadows cast over, and all my darkest bits push and tug on me, reflect in everything I see and hear. I'm not ever so sure I deserve any of this.

For me I sat back and looked at you. It was one in the morning and you were wearing that sweater that I love paired up with those jeans that are falling apart everywhere, stained and worn in from work and life and you. Your hair was a mess, your eyes tired and squinting to look at me in the dim view from the porch light and our lit cigarettes - you never looked so beautiful to me. You grabbed hold of my hand right then and I knew - and for a moment the voices and the doubts and those feelings of frustration and fear all flew away.

I try to hold onto moments like that, just like I try to hold on to myself, and to you, and to us. Sometimes I have to remember who I am in all of this - and know that I'm the one to risk and jump and love - and that sometimes that is the best thing to do, the only thing to do.

Love.