A friend left a comment on a recent post observing that one becomes emotionally exhausted by a deluge of bad news.  The reflex is to “cocoon,” to contract inwardly in order to reduce exposure to continued erosion of the self, to further loss of sanity.  I knew what he meant by his insight.

I have turned to music many times for a refuge, a safe space for reconstitution.  I know that many others report that to be their practice as well.  This morning I offer for your reflection a song written in 1986, composed and recorded in under twenty four hours.  If you leave was written for the last scene in John Hughes movie, Pretty In Pink.  It is considered one of the most popular songs of the 80s.

As with poetry, and all language really, there is no one single true meaning of these lines.  The truth is nothing more, and nothing less than what you find/make/derive from the grammar and the flow of the language as it enters your life, into your time and place when you listen, that your mind creates your truth.  Most would agree with me when it comes to a song lyric such as this.  But, I would contend that is the case with ALL formulations of language.  A scientific formula is more restrictive in meaning, but the difference is one of degree.

That is my  only philosophical offering of the morning.  Best that we just listen, and absorb the effect of the song.  I will observe though that this is about time, about how relationships do not and cannot stay the same, be unaffected by the passage of time.  Time means change.  Change is synonym for not looking back.

IF YOU LEAVE

by Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark

If you leave, don’t leave now
Please don’t take my heart away
Promise me just one more night
Then we’ll go our separate ways

We’ve always had time on our sides
But now it’s fading fast
Every second
Every moment
We’ve got to, we’ve gotta make it last

I touch you once I touch you twice
I won’t let go at any price
I need you now like I needed you then
You always said we’d still be friends someday

If you leave
I won’t cry
I won’t waste one single day
But if you leave, don’t look back

I’ll be running the other way
Seven years went under the bridge
Like time was standing still
Heaven knows what happens now
You’ve got to, you’ve gotta say you will

I touch you once, I touch you twice
I won’t let go at any price
I need you now like I need you then
You always said we’d meet again

I touch you once I touch you twice
I won’t let go at any price
I need you now like I need you then
You always said we’d still be friends

I touch you once I touch you twice
I won’t let go at any price
I need you now like I need you then
You always said we’d meet again someday

If you leave
If you leave
If you leave
Don’t look back
Don’t look back

Songwriters: Martin Handsley Cooper / Paul David Humphreys / Andrew McCluskey