My mother introduced us to the Carpenters, or maybe it was just her easy-listening radio station that did it. Whatever the case, the melodies of that musical group informed the early years of my musical education, and ever since I’ve been a sucker for a hook and melody delivered in earnest, dramatic fashion.
Leave it to Madonna to remind me of this song during a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the filming of ‘Evita’. She and some of the other actors were sitting around between takes and singing a few songs by the Carpenters. This was one of them, and whenever I hear it I’m instantly brought back to that winter of ‘Evita’ and all its now-acknowledged loneliness.
Loneliness is such a sad affairAnd I can hardly wait to be with you againWhat to say, to make you come again? (Ooh, baby)Come back to me again (Ooh, baby)And play your sad guitar
Once upon a long time ago, there was a boy who played his guitar for me ~ a nameless boy, on a drunken night, before I found true love. After a brief tussle in his flannel-sheeted bed, I laid there as he found his guitar in the darkened room and sat down on the edge of the mattress, strumming snippets of a few folk songs. I knew instantly we would never be together – his naked act was so raw and vulnerable even I would not approach damaging him in the way I had damaged others, and would damage more.
It wasn’t as selfless as it may seem – at the moment I understood I was saving myself as much pain as I was saving him. Still, I lingered when I should have been somewhere, anywhere else, and let him play his music for me. Barely illuminated by the gray light coming from a dirty window, he was mostly a silhouette, a tender shadow only given away through the movements of his arm and the strumming of the strings. He sang along a bit too – the voice of a young man when we were both still in the early stage of youth when we could be careless of heart and head and still maybe make it out unscathed. Maybe.
I dressed quickly when he paused in his songs. He tugged at my shirt a bit as I hastily worked to button it, and I left it mostly undone in my rush to get out of there. He never saw my eyes well up from the beauty of his act.
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