This week I fell in love with a song by Hayden called "Lonely Security Guard" from the 2008 album In Field & Town.
Most of you probably know Hayden from his 1995 album Everything I Long For, and the song "Bad As They Seem."
As this song weaved through my thoughts, my dreams and my everyday activities this week, I was able to categorize my ponderings into three interesting parts:
1. Falling in love with a song reminds me a lot of falling in love with a person.
Most people are initially attracted to a song because of the music - which is what can be easily processed first. You love the sound of the violin in the chorus, or the drum beat of the intro, or the simple beauty of the melody, or whatever. When people fall in love, what do they notice first? "I couldn't take my eyes off her..." "He has the most gorgeous eyes that seemed to see right through me..." "The way she carried herself..." "His strong air of confidence..." "Her winning smile..." you get the picture.
Yet the real love develops when you find out more about that person. It's so exciting when you meet someone and then end up talking for hours and hours about yourselves, and discover that you like many of the same things and share many of the same opinions. You love his sense of humour. You love the way she gets excited about the little things. When you sit down and really listen to a song, or look up the lyrics, and find you love them too, your love for the song really blooms. When you find that the inside of a person, or the depth of a song is as beautiful as the outside of a person, or the music of a song, the internal resonates with the external, and it only makes sense that you love it wholly.
This is how I felt with "Lonely Security Guard." I loved the melody, and the way the first part transitioned perfectly into the second part. It made sense to me that the song progressed the way it did, as though we connected. When I found the lyrics, I was even more impressed with the song. They are solid and clever and raw and beautiful. Then, much in the way that when you fall in love with someone, you can't stop thinking about him/her, I couldn't get the song out of my head. All week, it floated along with me as I fed Emmett, talked with Joel, went grocery shopping, folded laundry and read/replied to e-mails. Much as life seems to get brighter and you seem to feel lighter when you first fall in love, I fell into step with the song and I think it made my week a little happier by playing in my head wherever I went.
2. I wondered at the idea of random discovery.
I owned a copy of Everything I Long For, from way back in the 1990s. I really love several of the songs on the album, including "Bad As They Seem" and "Stem." Overall, the album is really sad, though, so it's not something I loved to listen to all the time. Maybe when I felt depressed - it's great to listen to when you're depressed. So somehow, the excitement for this album died down eventually and the CD collected dust on my shelf.
A couple of years ago, when Joel and I pooled our CD collections (which was great for me because it multiplied my collection by at least 10x), we realized we both had this album. We listened to it together a couple of times. I noticed that Joel had a couple more Hayden albums. After that, we never happened to discuss Hayden again...
...until this past Christmas, when Joel randomly happened to buy a couple more Hayden albums off iTunes, including In Field & Town. And one day, we were sitting in the living room, and Joel put In Field & Town on. I happened to really like it. Now you have to realize that Joel has upwards of 10,000 songs on his iPod, many of which I don't know, so if I don't know the artist, I won't ask who it is unless I really like the music. I really liked In Field & Town. Joel told me it was Hayden, and I was really surprised. It wasn't the typical melancholic sound so characteristic of Hayden. I sat on the couch long enough to hear "Lonely Security Guard" (which is a feat because I get restless pretty quickly). I fell in love. I love to discover treasures like this. A Canadian artist from Thornhill, Ontario wrote a beautiful song over two years ago about a security guard who makes origami from discarded paper, and I just found it now.
By a series of random happenings, I discovered a song I love, and this week has been sweeter because of it.
3. I want to encourage everyone who has created something:
I realized that when you create something--whether a song, a movie, a story, a poem, a painting or drawing, a photograph, a video--a piece of art--it now exists, and could exist forever. Just because you release it to be discovered one day, and not so many people seem to notice it right away--or you wish more people would notice it--doesn't mean "that's it." Who knows who will discover it, and where, when, how and why it will be discovered. There is great potential in any creation. You do your part by creating something you believe in. Now, let God do His part by weaving life's happenings through your creations. Who knows the kind of impact it has already had, is having now or will have in the future.
Links:
I found a CBC Radio3 podcast in which "Lonely Security Guard" was the Track of the Day (haha, back in February of 2008!). The podcast includes about 30 seconds of commentary on the song and then the studio recording of the song. Make sure you click on the green Play button toward the centre of the page, below the Track of the Day graphic. Listen to it!
http://radio3.cbc.ca/#/podcasts/CBC-Radio-3-Track-of-the-Day/Hayden---Lonely-Security-Guard
Here is a link to the lyrics for the song:
http://www.lyricsmania.com/lonely_security_guard_lyrics_hayden.html
Enjoy! Perhaps this song will impact you as it has me.
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