I remembered a story from when my daughter, Katie, was only ten years old. We were hanging around the house one afternoon listening to an oldies radio station while doing chores and waiting for Cyndi to come home from whatever exercise class she was teaching at the time. Katie asked, “Daddy, what’s your favorite song?”
I tended to avoid “favorite” questions because it’s too hard to decide an absolute-of-all-time top favorite, and I knew that whatever I told Katie she would remember forever and bring it up again if I ever mentioned a different song as being my favorite. She had a long memory, even at ten.
And then, even as we were talking, I heard a familiar song begin to play over the radio and I couldn’t believe my luck. It started with strings and a subdued bass guitar line and I could feel my heart opening up.
Katie said, “What happened? Why did you start smiling?”
I said, “Listen to this song. It’s been one of my favorites since I heard it for the first time in the summer of 1973.”
We both listened as Edward Cornelius sang, “My momma told me, she said son please beware. There’s a thing called love and it’s everywhere.”
By now Katie and I were dancing in the living room and I was singing along: “It’s too late to turn back now. I believe, I believe, I believe I’m falling in love. It’s too late to turn back now. I believe, I believe, I believe I’m falling in love.”
Katie said, “I guess that song is about you and mom, isn’t it?”
“Aren’t they all?”
I don’t know if Katie remembers that day, but I think of it every time I hear the song. And I can also picture the first time I heard it – standing beside a vending machine in Hobbs, New Mexico, where we bought drinks and snacks during summer school.
In fact, I wasn’t in love with anyone when I heard the song the first time so I don’t know why it sticks in my memory, but now that I have been in love for the past 30 years a lot of love songs stay in my mind.
My first date with Cyndi – well, it was a “group date” with about twenty college band kids where I found it surprisingly easy to maneuver myself next to Cyndi all evening long and which led to our actual first date to a movie – was about music. We went to a concert in Denton, Texas, of the One O’clock Jazz Band featuring an Asian woman who composed and played piano and her husband who played saxophone (I don’t remember their names – Cyndi had my attention that night), and music and love songs have captured us both ever since.
I’m writing about this because I sent out a playlist of love songs a couple of weeks ago and since then I’ve been receiving suggested songs to add to my list. A lot of people have favorite love songs and a lot of people want me to know about them.
I think the response I’ve had to my love song playlist is about more than just the music - it’s about love. People need to give love away. Erwin McManus wrote: “Love is not a limited commodity – love expands as we give it away. Love dies when we do not (give it away).” It’s as if love only exists when it’s in motion, and once it stops moving, it fades away. Maybe sharing favorite love songs is another way of keeping love in motion.
Another thing McManus wrote about love is this: “The most powerful evidence that our souls crave God is that within us there is a longing for love.” Longing for love does not seem to have any evolutionary or biological advantage. Instead it makes us vulnerable and causes us take unnecessary risks. Continuation of the species does not depend on love, or else we’d have run out of horses and cows and cats and dogs and rats long ago. But love is critical for us as human beings.
Even sharing a favorite song can be a scary venture of vulnerability because who knows whether the person we share it with will like it. What if they’re really cool musicians and we look up to them and we want them to be impressed with us but when they listen to our favorite song they just laugh at our naiveté and sympathize with our poor taste? What if that?
Well, even as I typed this journal I’ve been listening to “It’s Too Late To Turn Back Now” by The Cornelius Brothers and Sister Rose on my computer. It still makes me smile. This love song thing, it has deep roots in my heart.
