I and Love and You

It's kind of funny. The way life works out. The way people surprise you in even the simplest of ways. How a letter or a phone call can seemingly change the course of your very existence. I think it's something about the power of words. Or maybe it's more the people saying them. For a time I've attached myself to this theory that words are not enough. That words actually carry very little weight. They're empty. Because no words can fully encompass all that someone is or what they mean to us. No words can truly encapsulate the depths of emotion. Only we can comprehend our feelings- their immensity and shape.

Yet we grasp at alike words: happy, sad, love, fear... and think that we each mean to express similar sentiments when in actuality, that's impossible. In actuality, we have no way of knowing the capacity of another to feel happy or sad, to fear, to love. Yet in clinging to these words one has to believe that we at least move in like minded directions. That my 'love' could not be so off course from that of another. That your 'happiness' sits close to mine if not so neatly beside it.

But, I suppose aside from action, from the physical depictions of emotion, words are sort of all we've got. So it's no wonder that relationships become so complicated. You'd think they could be simple. You'd think that at our very core, human beings are actually quite simple. We all want and need the same basic things. We're just struggling to understand one another's words... how we express our needs or desires for those common necessities. We dance around ideas, bull shit, lie, pretend... we use and abuse a language so expertly devised to simply tell the truth. And find ourselves wondering why these things are all so complicated.

Well then maybe it's not the words themselves, but really the people saying them. It's how one's emotions and thought and intent manifest themselves inside the framework of words. How one can shape or manipulate or color those common words to mean what he or she needs them to mean...

The Avett Brother's have a song called "I and Love and You." It's my latest obsession. Maybe it's their struggle with words that rings home. Check it out, friends. And until next time...

Load the car and write the note
Grab your bag and grab your coat
Tell ones that need to know
We are headed north

All one foot in and one foot back
But it don't pay, to live like that
So I cut the ties and I jumped the tracks
For never to return

Brooklyn Brooklyn take me in
Are you aware the shape I'm in
My hands they shake my head it spins
Brooklyn Brooklyn take me in

When at first I learned to speak
I used all my words to fight
With him and her and you and me
Oh it's just a waste of time
It's such a waste of time

That women shes got eyes that shine
Like a pair of stolen polished dimes
She asked to dance I said it's fine
I'll see you in the morning time

Brooklyn Brooklyn take me in
Are you aware the shape I'm in
My hands they shake my head it spins
Brooklyn Brooklyn take me in

Three words that became hard to say
I and love and you
What you were then I am today
Look at the things I do

Brooklyn Brooklyn take me in
Are you aware the shape I'm in
My hands they shake my head it spins
Brooklyn Brooklyn take me in

Dumbed down and numbed by time and age
You dreams to catch this world the cage
The highway sets the travelers stage
All exits look the same
Three words that became hard to say
I and love and you
I and love and you
I and love and you