Sometimes you attach a song to a particular moment, a particular relationship, or a particular time in your life. For example, every time I hear the Cranberries, I think of my junior year of college and all of the struggles at that time.
Sometimes you hear a song after the fact. A few years after a relationship went south for the last time, I heard “Moanin’ Of The Midnight Train” by Butch Hancock. It just fit. The song described so well the frustations of that relationship.
“Sweetheart, your heart is loaded down
with useless burdens and bones…
I can tell by the tear stains on your letter
You wrote me from the twilight zone…
You ask if I miss you
yes, of course I miss you
I miss you every night… or two…
When I hear the moanin’ of the midnight train
It reminds me so much of you”
The truth is I loved her, but often I didn’t like her. She carried the weight of so much of what she didn’t have to. It’s as if she was looking for something to burden her. I just didn’t have enough experience to realize it wasn’t a good match. I thought if she just realized how much she had to be thankful for, she would be happy. I thought her happiness was just around the corner. But she was always moaning about something.
One day it’s not enough… one day it’s too much
One day it’s just a little bit of each…
One day you’re face to face and you don’t even touch
You walk away when it’s well within your reach…
With that wall all around you
it was me you let in
When you said nobody but nobody would do…
When I hear the moanin’ of the midnight train
It reminds me so much of you
She did have a wall around around herself, and a time came when I finally breeched it. I remember we had this great weekend, and I came away at the end of it without ever embracing her. It was such an odd, melancholy end. Sometimes a relationship ends, and yet you have all of this emotion and feelings built up and nowhere to take it.
I think that is a great power of a song – to translate a feeling and an experience. I found an old compilation CD I made a few days ago, and I popped it into the player. That track played tonight. It took me back to that relationship and all of its frustrations and weird dynamic. I had to learn the hard way on that relationship, but I am glad now, so many years later, to have had it.
