Tears II

[AZroute74]

I had to re-start this thread because for some reason it doesn't come up right on my computer,and I can't read it. I think the question originally posted, paraphrased as close as I can get it, was "Have you ever been feeling really down, and then a Gordon Lightfoot song made you choke up or cry?"

Well, I've been trying to use his music to KEEP from crying. Divorce is painful, and this was one man I thought wouldn't leave me. But he did, after only a year of marriage, basically because his sister didn't like me. And today I've been really, really low. Maybe I *need* a good cry.

So I plug in Disk 2 of Songbook, and I get "Cobwebs and Dust," "Too Much To Lose," "That Same Old Obsession," and "Can't Depend on Love," all on one disk, not to mention "If You Could Read My Mind."

The thing is, it ain't happening. I am too far gone. I'm frozen. It may be that I am in my mother's house, and I have never been able to show my feelings around family members. My children, 18 and 20, have never seen me cry. But I have to unfreeze myself. Can anyone recommend a GL tune that's guaranteed to break open the dam?

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"Pickin' up the pieces of my sweet, shattered dream..."

[Janice]

Sometimes crying can be cleansing, AZ

"Too Late For Prayin'", "Someone To Believe In" and "Race Among The Ruins" are good bets.

It's been stated before, but I'll say it again, the vast majority of Gords sad tunes only make it worse, it makes you want to cry more, but to me they also make me stronger.

[AZroute74]

quote:Originally posted by DMD3:
"Too Late For Prayin'", "Someone To Believe In" and "Race Among The Ruins" are good bets.

It's been stated before, but I'll say it again, the vast majority of Gords sad tunes only make it worse, it makes you want to cry more, but to me they also make me stronger.

Thanks for the suggestions. "Race" is the only one I currently have, and it actually makes me feel better. Trouble is, I don't want to feel better right now. I'm grieving and need to express things. As Janice notes, it is better and healthier for me to get it out. Does someone at least have the lyrics to the other songs mentioned?

Thanks, friends.
or Whichever.

[Janice]

AZ, if you go to the home page of this site and click on songs, you'll find a listing of all the songs and if you click on the particular song, it will display the lyrics.

Janice

AZroute74: "Welcome To Try" is also another good one, if you have it that is.

[joveski]

>and then a Gordon Lightfoot song made you choke up or cry?"

not a lightfoot song, but Johnny Cash's 'Hurt' has the potential of bringing a lump in the throat to any man made of steel

[AZroute74]

Discovered I do have "Someone To Believe In." Yes, it does kind of stab a little, but what really got me was the last line of "Sit Down Young Stranger."

"John loves Mary, does anyone love me?"

I would have put in on my sig line, but I don't want to come across like I'm feeling sorry for myself. Or is it too late?

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"Pickin' up the pieces of my sweet, shattered dream..."

[superiorsings]

what about "the Last Time I saw Her?" in your case, him.

The seeds of love lie cold and still
beneath a battered marking stone
It lies forgotten

If I really listen good, I cry.

[Cathy]

quote:Originally posted by AZroute74:
Thanks for the suggestions. "Race" is the only one I currently have, and it actually makes me feel better. Trouble is, I don't want to feel better right now. I'm grieving and need to express things. As Janice notes, it is better and healthier for me to get it out. Does someone at least have the lyrics to the other songs mentioned?

Thanks, friends.
or Whichever.

Here's a tear jerker for you.

Your Love's Return, ©1969 by Gordon Lightfoot
(Song For Stephen Foster)

Come to the door my pretty one
Put on your rings and precious things
Hide all your tears as best you can
Try to recall what used to be

Roses are waiting for dewdrops to fall
Climbing your windows and walls
Bells in the steeple are ringing, singing
Listen to them talk about your love's return

Let me come in my pretty one
And try to undo what I have done
For I must be forgiven now
I can not leave your love alone

Roses are waiting for dewdrops to fall
Climbing your windows and walls
Leaves in the garden are falling, calling
Listen to them talk about your love's return

Let me come in my precious one
Wake from your sleep and take me home
Open your eyes and look my way
I will not lose what I have won

Roses are waiting for dewdrops to fall
Climbing your windows and walls
Bells in the steeple are ringing, singing
Listen to them talk about your love's return

Cathy http://www.cathycowette.com

[Mair]

If you're talking about catharsis - well, "Tattoo" (from "Salute") always does it for me! I have to be careful when I listen to this now - this track always makes me cry! And once, when I needed it most, it really opened the floodgates. And it helped me (so much!!!) Such feeling, and such a sub-text ... It released something in me! And I cried. And then I went back to my day to day life. And that's the power of this music!

"LOOKING AT THE RAIN", always makes me stop and think real hard about things in the past.. Randy

[classicmixdj]

I too am thinking "Tatoo", or "Dreamland"...

[This message has been edited by classicmixdj (edited February 25, 2004).]

[Janice]

Mair, Tattoo is one of my very favorite songs!! And I get misty every time I hear it.

Janice

quote:Originally posted by Mair:
If you're talking about catharsis - well, "Tattoo" (from "Salute") always does it for me! I have to be careful when I listen to this now - this track always makes me cry! And once, when I needed it most, it really opened the floodgates. And it helped me (so much!!!) Such feeling, and such a sub-text ... It released something in me! And I cried. And then I went back to my day to day life. And that's the power of this music!

[SilverHeels]

AZroute74,

'I'm not s'posed to care' does it for me everytime. Another is 'Listening to the Rain'... oh,boy! Where's the Kleenex!

[BILLW]

speaking of AZroute74......are you still with us ?

Bill

[AZroute74]

Sweet of you to ask. I'm trying to get settled into my own apartment, should be sometime Monday or Tuesday (around the first of the month.) So my life has been a little chaotic and not much time for 'net surfing.

Every once in a while I do get to the library and can scan these posts. I'm still here, just a little quiet right now.

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"Pickin' up the pieces of my sweet, shattered dream..."

[BILLW]

AZroute74,

Good Luck with the move.

For a while there, my email signature was some version of:

"Here among my thoughts of you I find a gentle longing to be free"

That's from Now and Then on Cold on the Shoulder. I was in one of those relationships where leaving is the best thing to do, but staying is easier and less painful. The last year was really rough. That line always leaped out at me in that song.

Then there's the one on Don Quixote "Looking at the Rain". That one gets to me. I was listening to that one last night.

quote:Originally posted by AZroute74:
Discovered I do have "Someone To Believe In." Yes, it does kind of stab a little, but what really got me was the last line of "Sit Down Young Stranger."

"John loves Mary, does anyone love me?"

I would have put in on my sig line, but I don't want to come across like I'm feeling sorry for myself. Or is it too late?





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Born once - Got it right the first time. )O(

[Mair]

quote:Originally posted by Janice:
Mair, Tattoo is one of my very favorite songs!! And I get misty every time I hear it.


Sorry, Janice - I haven't been here for a while ... but this is my favourite too! So painful - but why do I love it? Why do I listen so often?

And just at the moment "Did She Mention My Name" is so painful - because, suddenly, it seems so personal!

But that's what great talent is all about - the greatest artists can make you feel that they know you personally and are speaking just to you, and you alone.

[Gaby]

I’ve wondered for weeks whether or not to post this.
What the hell! – I’ll probably never meet any of you, anyway, and I can always delete it when I recover my ‘undone senses’.

A Tree Too Weak To Stand (Cold On The Shoulder) 3:22

I see a place where candles burn and lovers rest tonight
The hollow sound inside me now keeps telling me to write
But songs of love will never leave love's feelings undefiled
The tide has turned, the waves roll in, the waters fill my eyes

The price of lust has risen till the ceiling will not stand
The tears I shed were not in shame, the world was in my hands
If trust was just a simple thing then trusting I would be
But deep within my soul I know it's better to be free

The days fly by, the waves roll in, but freedom has not come
I fear my faith will soon give out, my senses come undone
My role is played, the demon dogs come stealin' o'er land
And foolish I would climb once more a tree too weak to stand

I see a place where candles burn and lovers rest tonight
The hollow sound inside me now keeps telling me to write
But songs of love should not be sung where staying is not planned
And foolish I would climb once more a tree too weak to stand
And foolish I would climb once more a tree too weak to stand

This is the song that has me in floods of tears at the moment.
It’s far too close to home.

“But deep within my soul I know it's better to be free”

“But songs of love should not be sung where staying is not planned”

These lines just scream out at me, chiming with ‘the hollow sound inside me’. After 22 years together ‘I fear my faith will soon give out’ but I still remember fondly ‘a place where candles burn and lovers rest tonight’. (And frequently still do. )
I know perfectly well that I will keep going back to climb this particular tree. I just don’t know if it’s really worth so much damn hard work. So often I just feel so drained and exhausted, my ‘love’s feelings defiled’; ‘the waters fill my eyes’.

GL has completely captured, for me at least, every agonising moment in a disintegrating relationship, whose roots have become too rotten to sustain it. As Mair said, the man is a great artist; a genius who can articulate profound emotions which leave us floundering, confused and distraught.
He’s been through it all himself and I have the horrible feeling the poor man is having to cope with it again at this particularly vulnerable time in his life. Like him, I’ve been in and out of hospital over the last five months – feeling absolute crap, work on hold, marriage crumbling. Anyway, I’ll bounce back. He definitely seems to be. There is a light at the end of the tunnel – Massey. And, I am going to be there!

[SilverHeels]

Gaby,

so sorry for your pain and remember we are your 'Rainy Day People'. We are always here to talk to when it seems there is no one else listening.

Hang in there, girl.

[Janice]

I know exactly what you mean, Mair. Sometimes it hurts to hear some of these songs that hit so close to home, but it hurts in a good way - in a cleansing way - and I believe that's why we're so drawn to them.

I agree that sometimes it really does feel like songwriters are directing their words to you alone. I don't know who wrote the song and I don't have the energy or patience to search right now, but Roberta Flack summed it up best when she sang, "Killing Me Softly With His Song" When that song first came out, I sat there thinking, "I know exactly how that narrator feels - I could be that person!" If you're not familiar with the song, it's about a person who went to hear a performer and he was singing her life with his words.

Janice

quote:Originally posted by Mair:
Sorry, Janice - I haven't been here for a while ... but this is my favourite too! So painful - but why do I love it? Why do I listen so often?

And just at the moment "Did She Mention My Name" is so painful - because, suddenly, it seems so personal!

But that's what great talent is all about - the greatest artists can make you feel that they know you personally and are speaking just to you, and you alone.

[Char1]

That song was about Don Maclean (American Pie, Vincent-Starry Starry Night)
http://www.don-mclean.com/

more details of the songwriter: http://www.songsofshirleybassey.co.u.../sng73007.html

Killing Me Softly With His Song
Music written by Charles Fox and words by Norman Gimbel.

Released 1973 on the album Never, Never, Never. Available on CD on some collections, for example Let Me Sing And I'm Happy and Diamonds Are Forever.

The song was originally sung by folk-singer and songwriter Lori Lieberman. She was inspired by Don McLean: Coaxed by a friend, she went to see the then-unknown McLean sing at the famous Troubadour Club on the Sunset Strip in Los Angeles in the early 70's.

"I was actually blasé about going," said Lieberman. "I didn’t know who he was, but from the moment he walked on stage, I was spellbound. I felt as if he knew me and his songs were about my life. I felt like he sang into my soul."

McLean’s performance of "American Pie" and other songs inspired Lieberman so much, that she penned a poem about the singer. Still in the nightclub she made some notes on a napkin, and she said "I saw Don Mclean play the Troubadour in L.A. one night and I was so moved by his lyrics and melodies that I went home and wrote a poem about it." She felt as though this young man had found her personal letters and read them out loud, and that he was killing her softly with his words. That poem – originally titled "Killing Me Softly With His Blues" – inspired songwriters Norman Gimbel and Charles Fox to write this song for Lori Lieberman and she went on to record it and released it on her debut album 1971.

The song was included in an airline’s in-flight music program. During a cross-country flight, soul singer Roberta Flack heard the song and immediately was intrigued by it. Upon landing, Flack investigated the song, contacted Gimbel and Fox, and offered to record it. They agreed, and in 1973 it became a No. 1 hit for Roberta Flack. Twenty-six years later, Lieberman is still licking her wounds. She was never given credit for the lyrics, and her version, as beautifully done as Flack’s, quickly disappeared.

McLean said he had no idea the song was about him. "Someone called me and said a song had been written about me and it was No. 1," McLean recalled. "It was an honour and a delight, and I give Lieberman the credit. My songs have always come from my personal thoughts and experiences, so it’s overwhelming when someone is moved and touched by them like Lori was." For more information on Don McLean look at And I Love You So.

Roberta Flack released her recording of this song on a single in late January 1973, and within a month it was number one in the US Billboard, and had been certified gold by the RIAA. In August of the same year Roberta Flack then released an Album entitled "Killing Me Softly" containing the hit single and a few other songs including "Jesse" and When You Smile. Roberta Flack 1973 received the Grammy Awards for "Pop Female Vocal" and "Record of the Year" and the composers received the award for the "Song of the Year". The song was interpreted meanwhile by many other artists and orchestras.

Composer Charles Fox and lyricist Norman Gimbel as a team have written successfully for other artists as well, but their greatest success was in writing themes for television. Norman Gimbel teamed with composer David Shire to write "It Goes Like It Goes," the Oscar-winning theme to 1979 movie "Norma Rae". Norman Gimbel wrote the English-language adaptation of "The Girl from Ipanema", which Shirley Bassey has recorded as The Boy from Ipanema.


Lyrics

Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly with his song

I heard he sang a good song
I heard he had a style
And so I came to see him
To listen for a while
And there he was this young boy
A stranger to my eyes

Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly with his song

I felt all flushed with fever
Embarrassed by the crowd
I felt he found my letters
And read each one out loud
I prayed that he would finish
But he just kept right on

Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly with his song

He sang as if he knew me In all my dark despair
And then he looked right through me as if I wasn't there
But he just kept on singing
Singing clear and strong

Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly with his song

Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly with his song

Strumming my pain with his fingers
Singing my life with his words
Killing me softly with his song
Killing me softly with his song
Telling my whole life with his words
Killing me softly with his song

(Transcribed by Roman)

[BILLW]

Gaby,
Hang in there, we're all pulling for you, praying for you and all the other things this family of Gord's does. I can't say I know how you feel, how could one ? But I can say I care how you feel and I sincerely hope there is a kinder, gentler future in store for you down some Carefree Highway.
Peace,
Bill