a boring love song
We had known each other for quite some time, but I remember most the moment we fell in love. It was a Saturday in June, and we were at an Appalachian apple orchard. I wasn’t dressed up all that special, but neither was she. We were there for a kind of mountain music festival, and it was sometime during the chorus of “Ashokan Farewell”—during the chord change from C to B flat—at that very moment, I knew that I never wanted to spend another day without her.
I thought I knew what I wanted in life. I was going to grow up and be a music teacher. She was going to stay through it all and support me. We would have a happy life together. In high school I’d spend every moment I could with her. I’d say before graduation, we worked the best together. We did get to know each other a lot better after high school, but when you’re young and in love you think you can conquer all obstacles. But you can’t.
After high school we grew apart, slowly. I wanted to be a rock star, but she didn’t want to be a rock star’s wife. Slowly, we got different friends. Her dreams were too conservative—to be the wife of a music teacher. I felt like my dreams were beyond her. She didn’t understand me as she once did.
Then I left her—found a new love. It wasn’t fair to put her through my personal problems, and I thought I had found a girl who understood me better. Still, something in the back of my mind craved her. I eventually saw her on the side. I could tell she still wanted me. She had changed in that she was willing to forge a new dream. But I wasn’t convinced to stay with her. I treated her like a dog.
Years later, we met again. It was fate. I received a wedding invitation from one of my best friends in high school. I probably wouldn’t have accepted the invitation if I had known that she would be sitting across from me at the reception. She was cold to me. I don’t blame her after the hell I put her through. I was in line to get one last drink before I hit the road, when she came up to speak to me. Her voice was timid, and I could tell that she wanted to run away, but forced herself to stand there. “I just want to know why.”
I had no explanation. It was just that I was young and dumb and didn’t know what I wanted. I fumbled through those words. To that she replied firmly. “Just give me one last dance so that I can know that it’s over.” I couldn’t refuse. I knew that there was no reason that I would get back together with this girl. I felt like I had ruined her life and I couldn’t put her through more of my crap.
The band was good. They were a jazz standards band, but they mixed the old Tony Benet and Dean Martin songs with a few current pop songs. I think everyone was happy with the music. But the song didn’t matter when it came time for our dance. I was ordinarily a good dance, but I was awkward with her now. It was a slow dance to “Autumn Leaves,” an appropriate choice considering the way that this relationship had deteriorated.
“I have been such an awful lover,” I said toward the end of the song. I had to break the tension somehow. That was probably not the best thing to say. She was silent then she replied. “Yes, you put me through a lot, but I don’t want this dance to be our deathbed confessions. I want to enjoy you for who you were and you to enjoy me for who I was.”
The dance ended, and then I did something I shouldn’t have. I asked her to another dance. After all I had put her through, she accepted. We were married the next year about that time.
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a discussion [bonus track]
I've been looking for ways to express how I feel about my changing dreams. Without ruining multiple interpretations of the story above, I'd like to say that the girl in the story represents my guitar or my dreams to be a musician. The wedding dance represents an obligation that I had this summer to start practicing again. Finally, the outcome represents me falling in love with music again.
There was a time in my life when I felt as if I was defined by my guitar. I used to play for church all the time, and people knew me because of my music. Often people at church ask me how I'm doing with my degree in music. Every time I tell them that I'm pursuing a degree in English education, something inside of me dies. I say, it's for practicality. Schools need English teachers especially because states are cutting funding for music programs. But that's only part of the reason why I chose not to continue studying music. My main reason was that I was that I started out as a guitar teacher and didn't feel like there was enough time for me to become as proficient in piano as I needed to be before entering a music program. Also, I should study band because schools don't hire piano teachers and this was just another one of the odds I was up against. Another reason was that I wanted to give up on reading classical music and write rock songs; I felt I couldn't express myself through other composer's music as fully as I could through my own compositions and I didn't want to compose classical music. Finally, I felt at times more in love with building a theoretical knowledge of music rather than actually playing it. However, studying theory seemed useless. I didn't want to be another Christopher Parkening. I liked playing weddings more than that, but in the long run, I felt that everything I did with music was a dead end road. That's why I switched to studying literature.
This summer, however, I think I'm finding a balance. I don't know how music fits into my life--I know that when I get back to school, my skills seem weak compared to Southern's school of music and the praise and even the rock guitarists who play for church. But my music was never really part of either category. I'm just going to practice for an hour or more each day and let my guitar tell me what to play. Whether or not I perform again and in which niche I will perform, I'm not going to worry about when I pick up my guitar. I used to practice with an agenda--either for a wedding, a CD, church, a concert with friends, etc. But now I'm going to work on some things I've been putting off, like reading notes in higher positions.
At the beginning of this summer when I forced myself to practice, I hated playing guitar, but now I feel as if I've been reunited with a long-lost loved one. What comes of this restored relationship, only God knows.
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