As a Spirit

- In love, sometimes we would like to see our selves shine, glow, incandesce out into the world - glowing in the night, like some stoked up fire fly, or falling star. At least sometimes, that is. Or maybe we want to be stoic, and strong - we want to be a rock, a foundation, a support.  Or, after a long time, we can dip into a strange world of just being, of being content - of feeling love in this moment of "just right for this moment".
The following song is from the mid eighties

As a Spirit

My hear stands as a castle,
Shape'ed by the rain
Hewn from the ice of a winters storm,
by a lovers gentle pain.
And now the walls lay newly stilled,
from the songs they used to sing,
The chambers seem so merciless
no solace do they bring,

The master door is open wide,
the gates are thrown away,
yet no one wants to come inside,
And I seem to hear them say -
"Do not go there, my friend
I think it is unsound,
and you might be inside of it,
when all the walls come down..."

You can say your life's half over,
or you still have half to live
You can stay outside, not risk a thing,
or come in and see what a house can give
Now won't you come and live in me?
I'll keep you warm and dry,
If just you'd fix my leaky roof,
and move your things inside.

But don't close the door when you come in,
this house is too large just for you,
It gets lonely in the winter,
Have some friends over, if you choose
If they don't mind a slightly haunted house,
Haunted by a single ghost
After all these years of loneliness,
I'm you're spiritual host.

(C) 2011 Dave Cox

The transition from lover to friend to nothing

- So, you meet someone who does something for you. Maybe they sat next to you in Chemistry and had a certain "something" about how they plagiarized your lab notes; maybe your at a bar, and a different kind of chemestry happens (perhaps C2H5O5 related...) A million different ways that we start to fall in love.
Then, after a while, usually its not just one thing, but a bunch of things that conspire to test the relationship... For me, it was often about 3 months after the start. Little things at first, stuff that you've been meaning to bring up, to work out; how could this NOT be important to you? And from there, usually the break up.
And there you are, in this strange space where there are so many options and paths you could follow. Many times the relationship just "goes away", and gets filed under the "that was a mistake" category.  Yet, when you find pictures of that weekend getaway years later, doesn't it still flash to a smile in your mind, your heart? Was it really a mistake? Or was it just an adventure. And if we could be ok knowing it wouldn't last, would we still go in, knowing that we would have an adventure which would leave us with more knowledge, some moments of passion, and lessons, and smiles.
And what about the love you had?  Is it gone, or has it morphed into something else? Has it hidden or kind of "composted itself" into something else? Now, looking back, I can see different flavors of love for all these people that touched my life - some dim tendrils, some still smoking years later...
Sometimes the transition from lover to friend was natural, some times it was unwanted, some times it was only temporary.
The following song comes from one such transition from lover, to friend, to in this case, nothing beyond an etheric memory or the "was".  This was from some time in the late 80s I think. Didn't even have a title on it -

Once you were the joy of my heart, the thrill of my mind, a hand upon my soul,
once you had a face that shown alone, a way that was your own, and me.
But then we loved in such a different way, you were my every day, and I your every night,
once you were, but now you can not be, I understand you see,
I don't need you, and you most certainly don't need me.
But still, some how, we're friends.

(C) 2011 Dave Cox

Too Young To Give My Heart Away

- From the perspective of a teenager, I remember thinking that I had a lot more going on than most adults could appreciate or probably comprehend.  They were, after all, way to "old" to remember what it was like, and undoubtedly, there was something uniquely cool about our generation, that made us better equipped, smarter, and, well, just overall, um, well, something or other, than they were... I assumed I knew what was going on, even though, now, I realize that I didn't - but was unable to hear or understand that possibility because, I was a teenager...
One of the BIG programming subjects by society is sexuality, "romantic love" and the whole idea that you are somehow incomplete of your self; that you need another person to complete you - as if you are only half of a person (or less), half a heart. And further confusing, there is some suggestion that there is only one other "half" that will fit you to complete you. And you're supposed to get it right the first time - when you know absolutely nothing about it...
So this is a song written in November of 2000, in retrospective of my teenage years and first love/heartbreak.

Too Young To Give My Heart Away

When I was a child, innocent and pure,
My mom told me fairy tails, of how true love endures
So I grew up thinking, all I had to do,
was find someone to take my heart, and our love would be true.

So I looked around, to see who was there,
Someone here right next to me could be the answer to my prayers,
A girl came along, I thought she might be the one,
at 16 I was tired of waiting, and so the pain begun...

[Chorus]
I was too young, to give my heart away, I know it now,
but the waiting seemed eternal, as if I was missing out some how,
If I could have waited, and reigned in my heart more,
Maybe I wouldn't have had to pick up, all its pieces from the floor


So we tried this game called love, we thought we knew the rules,
I'd hear it would be easy, and believed it like a fool
But someone forgot to mention, the most important rule of all,
at sixteen we barely knew our selves, so we were destined for a fall...

If I could send a message through the heart break to my past,
not to waste my precious youth on a love that couldn't last,
and hold on to to your heart, don't think that love is late,
cause when the right love finally comes along, it was worth the wait.

Chorus

(C) 2011 Dave Cox