#12to12

We made it!! Day 14th!

And even though I said there was no particular order I did save my favorite for last.

Laura Marling - For you

Now this is a love song. It’s the feeling of someone else being made for you, by something cosmic.

“It was just an evening

Much like any else

When you came into my life

It takes one to know one

And I saw you there

As I had seen you all my life”

As I’m sure we all know, there’s people we meet sometimes and from that instant we know they are going to be important. And it’s even more special when that person is the person we love.

And the chorus,

“I thank a God I've never met

Never loved, never wanted (For you)

I write it so I don't forget

Never let it get away

I wear a picture of you

Just to keep you safe”

“I thank a god I’ve never met, never loved, never wanted for you” I mean holy shit. I mean I think even if you’re not religious there are times when you think, Fate or God or whoever planned this.

And my favorite line ever,

“No childish expectation

Love is not the answer

But the line that marks the start”

There’s this passage from a writing by C.S. Lewis that I’ve always loved where he’s talking about marriage and love. He says, “Being in love' first moved them to promise fidelity: this quieter love enables them to keep the promise. It is on this love that the engine of the marriage is run: being in love was the explosion that started it.”

Love is not stagnant, it grows and changes much like all of us change and I think Laura Marling captures that perfectly.

No childish expectations,

we’re so close!! its day 13!

Father John Misty - Real love baby

I know I know you’re probably heard this song before but it’s a classic!! And sometimes it’s fun to actually break down the lyrics of songs you’ve heard a thousand times.

The first verse starts,

“Our hearts are free

So tell me what's wrong with the feeling

I'm a flower, you're the bee

It's much older than you and me

I'm in love, I'm alive

I belong to the stars and sky

Let's forget who we are for one night

We're not animals, baby

It's the people who lie (to themselves)”

Love’s much older than you and me. Love began long before us and undoubtedly will continue long after you and me (and tumblr.com) are long long gone. And that’s both utterly terrifying and somehow comforting.

Then the chorus,

“I want real love, baby

There's a world inside me

Got the key, just use it

Just if for a minute”

I think there’s this desire, especially in the modern age, for real relationships, real connections, real love. Not just wanting to be viewed digitally but the feeling of being truly known by those you love. “There’s a world inside me, Got the key, just use it” We all have little worlds inside us. Made of media and people and endless knowledge. And it’s so sweet to be able to share that, to give someone a “key”.

There are worlds inside us,

Day 12!!

Lisa LeBlanc - 5748 km

In general, I love Lisa LeBlanc’s work but I particularly love this song.

The first verse LeBlanc describes the distance between her and the person she loves, you guessed it, 5748km.

And the second verse begin,

“That’s a lot of writing about your day

And sending letters by pigeon

That’s a lot of “I miss you’s’’

And “I wish you were here’s’’

A lot of Xs on the calendar and Xs for kisses

A life of hellos and a life of goodbyes”

It’s so sweet, I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s like lots of little tiny I love you’s in lyric form.

And every verse ends with,

“But I love you, yes, I really do”

The whole song was essentially boils down to, “this is a ridiculous distance and traveling it is going to be incredibly annoying and inconvenient, but at the end of the day I love you and that makes it all worth it.”

Plus I think it’s unique because you don’t really hear a whole lot of songs about long distance relationships.

Sending this via pigeon,

Day 11!!

Dr. Dog - I saw her for the first time

This, unlike a lot of the other songs I’ve talked about, is truly a love song. And not only are the lyrics perfect but it’s got this really sweet sounding string backing.

The chorus,

“I saw her for the first time

And I was longing for the last time

I saw her for the first time

And now I know I gotta make her mine”

I love the use of the word “longing” I think it would have been really easy to substitute it for “lonely” but I enjoy “longing” so much more. It’s like a ‘you fulfilled everything I was looking for’

And later, quite possibly my favorite lyric of the song,

“When she walked out I felt no doubt

I would see her again

Up in the clouds and deep in the crowds

Till the very end”

“I would see her again, up in the clouds and deep in the crowds, till the very end” Are you kidding me??

This, at its core, is what I love and admire most about music. It reminds me of the Ethan Hawk quote where he’s talking about poetry and says, “They have a life to live and they’re really not that concerned with Allen Ginsberg’s poems or anyone’s poems—until, their father dies; they go to a funeral; you lose a child; someone breaks your heart. And all of a sudden you’re desperate for making sense out of this life… And that’s when art’s not a luxury—it’s actually sustenance.” I think music is really similar it captures what we often don’t know how to say, and gives name to the feelings we struggle to describe.

And to me “I saw her for the first time”describes love.

Hope to see you in the cloud and deep in the crowds,

day 10!!!

Shakey Graves - Not wife (Could it be Her)*

This song was just (officially) released for shakey graves day (Woop Woop) and I don’t think it’s left my head since I heard it.

“My favorite not wife

I'll never cross the line

But what if we're together in another life”

It’s this idea of feeling like you could maybe be something with someone but never really fully committing to it.

And the chorus,

“Cause I fall in a little bit of love

With a lot of people

All the time”

Which gets repeated till the end of the song. I’m obsessed with that line. “I fall in a little bit of love with a lot of people all the time” because I think that’s true for all of us, even if we don’t realize it. A friend joking asked me recently “you don’t think love’s exciting?” and I think it can be. I think the idea that you meet people “all the time” that you “fall in a little bit of love with” is actually really sweet.

*based on the genius lyrics it seems like this song might have went by a different name before it was officially released so I chose to include both

Fall in a little bit of love,