Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Music Leaves a Mark

I was going to be uber-romantic today, and let you listen to the song that was playing the first time Sweet and I kissed. Yes, I still remember. Because music leaves a mark. The song is inextricable from the moment. In fact, the music itself is probably better than the moment, considering I was eating a bagel at the time and had terrible coffee breath. Poor girl had to kiss my bagelful mouth. Yuck.

So, as I said, I was going to be romantic. As yet, nothing I've written seems to have hit that mark.

But I will tell what song was on and why I'm not playing it for you at this very moment. The song was "A la mitraille" by Weepers Circus: not their most popular, not findable on YouTube, and not at all romantic. But Sweet doesn't understand French anyway, so I guess that doesn't matter.

There is another song I can play for you, which was also playing that evening, though not at the very moment Sweet and I first kissed. "La renarde" is a favourite of mine, for obvious reasons, and another song by Weepers Circus (with Olivia Ruiz), so it's about as close as I can get to sharing this romantic, if bagel-y, moment with you. It's pretty perfectly apt to a new relationship, actually:



The kiss I'm talking about happened not four years ago, and it's amazing to think how much has changed in that time. How much Sweet has changed, and how much I have. How we've gone through gushy in-love-ness, through early complications when she wasn't sure yet if she could trust me with her fragile heart, when I had to prove in word and action that I saw her as a woman and I wasn't just in it for the novelty of dating "a guy in a dress" as she puts it.

(If you're confused and/or new to the blog, Sweet is a trans woman and she had a lot of fears early on. She didn't understand why I'd be interested in her. I'm still not sure she really and truly believes that, to me, she is the most beautiful woman in the world.)

It really is hard to believe that in fewer than four years, life has changed so drastically. Sweet and I have fought a lot since then. Argued, I should say. A lot. Which is not pleasant, but is, I gather, part of growing together as a couple. And, my god, have we grown. I know because I've felt the pain of it, the stretch of it. I've felt bigger and smaller, I've felt insecure and I've felt relieved. And she's always been there. And I've always been there.

And music's always been there. There have been days where a certain song caught my ear and I've found myself thinking, "If it wasn't for this music, I would probably die just now." Most probably I wouldn't have spontaneously dropped dead from lack of music, but there's something soul-salving about it.

Cabaret Blanc is another song that was playing that first-kiss evening, and I've noticed that every time it comes on, Sweet stops what she's doing and listens to it. I think she's a little bit hypnotized:




But I suppose when I named this post "Music Leaves a Mark" I was thinking about the nebulous relation music has to life and time, and the memories, images, and emotions certain music evokes because we lived with it at given moments. Sweet and I went to a k.d. lang concert this summer, and now I can't hear a k.d. lang song without thinking of Sweet and smiling.

As for Olivia Ruiz, as for Weepers Circus...I love their music. Every time I listen to it, I remember why. But I find I don't listen to it as relentlessly as I used to, and I suppose that's because their time in my life was not this time. I fell in love to their soundtrack, and now the time of falling is complete and the work of climbing back up to reality is in full swing.

I'm hoping one day my girl and I will arrive at a place where we can live out our days in relative peace together. I wonder what music will be playing when we get there.

Here's a little more Weepers Circus:

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