I had knit a whole scarf, the first thing I’d ever knit in my life, to that album, to that song. To our song until one day, something happened and it was no longer our song. Or it was, it was mine, it was perhaps someone else’s too, or perhaps nobody’s at all. What I learned what I had invested all of this meaning in a song when perhaps it wasn’t there from the get-to. Such awful revelation.
We are all very egocentric in this regard, certain that the song on the radio are about us, as Carly Simon tells us, ‘you probably think this song is about you.” How many times have you heard a song at a particularly vulnerable time and been quite sure that the singer and songwriter knew first hand the pain your suffering. Your unique stadium self-pity was all right there in the riff. How did they know? Christ, when I first heard Nick Drake sing
Northern Sky, when he put it on a tape for me, I as quite sure it was about us and nobody else. Northern Sky is phrased as a series of questions. Drake wants to know, “Would you love me forever?” “Would you love me through the Winter?” “Would you love me till I’m dead?” “If you would and you could…” and so on. He seeks reassurance, but offers little. Oh sure, he’s ‘never seen magic crazy as this’, ‘never held an ocean in the palm of my hand,’ he tells us. I love Nick Drake, but he's so needy here, so pleading and desperate and it makes me sad. I guess that's his point - perhaps.
Drake asks, “If you would and you could….” He wants us to brighten his Northern sky. He wants so much, but what is he offering? I never thought about it until after I found out about the tape for A. I had been so busy offering that reassurance. I find myself, nonethless, saying, Yes yes yes in response to every question, and God yes, I’ll try like hell to brighten your northern sky. He is smart, because who would not like the conceit that they are important enough that they could actually brighten someone’s sky. It makes you feel important. until you find out that you aren’t the only one being asked.
Maybe there is no such thing as a song between two people that reminds them only of the other. It’s only normal that we would ask any lover “if they would and they could…” and find someone in the group that says “yes” then we can have his pick. When someone makes you a tape, you don’t think they’ve recorded the exact same songs for other lovers. So we are careful to make each tape slightly different; they are variations on a theme. We are well familiar with Northern Sky and Nick Drake and Bonnie Raitt and Led Zep. Maybe Led Zeppelin sang it best with, “All of my love to you and you and you and you….”
Article comments