I recently finished a song called Madness. It is a song about love. Love is wild and weird. Love it.
The inspiration from this song came from a friend's Facebook post that I saw a couple years ago. I was scrolling through my newsfeed when I came across a long quote that a friend had posted. It was too long to write down so I took a screenshot, threw it in an Evernote file, and then kept scrolling through Facebook.
The quote was from the movie Captain Corelli's Mandolin. I've never seen this movie, but this quote resonated with me.
This quote inspired me in the moment but I didn't write anything with it for two years. One day I was going back through old material and came across it with new eyes. I wrote a song about love, real love.
I've been married for three and a half years. Years two and three were characterized by tremendous life change and exhaustion (my wife and I had a baby, bought a house, I quit my job). Most of the excitement that we used to feel went away and we were running out of reasons to remember why we loved each other.
Verses 1 and 2 touch on this theme:
When the madness is gone
And the earthquakes have weathered away
When the breathlessness is hushed
And the best is burned to grey
When the magic is lost
In passion and promise's phase
When tenderness is far
Far as the west sun fades
The chorus asks the question: what happens at the "love" runs out?
The end of love, the end of love
Will we find love at the end of love?
The end, the end of love
Verse 3 continues:
When damage is done
When bickering burns through the braid
With emptiness the start
The star of a doomed sky, darling will we find love?
The answer to the question, or at least the answer that I want to live with for now, comes in the bridge.
Brick by brick we'll set our place
We'll carve our names
Tick by tick into the face
The walls we build will stand the rest of our days
From what I have learned thus far, love is not about feelings. Love is a house that you build with someone, a harbor from all the craziness of life. My wife and I are still building our house and we certainly bicker about how to build it but ultimately, I am so glad to live my life with her.
Let this song be a lesson to us all: always post inspiring quotes, pictures, videos, and blogs on social media. You never know how it will hit others.
Thanks for reading,
Ben