What's Love Got To Do With It?

owasco(73)

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Silver Bloggers

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When I saw the topic for this month's Blog of the Month, I was dismayed. I'd just been talking with @tezmel about my lack of interest, of late, in romantic love. Too much trouble really! I'd have to take into account someone else's needs, wants, quirks and obsessions. I might have to sleep on the other side of the bed. I would not be able to eat when I am hungry, or do what appeals most to me at any given time. To be involved with someone seems like a lot of trouble.

When we've had a baby, we forget how much that hurts. It's a good thing too, or we'd never have another. Similarly, it's a good thing we forget how good romantic love feels, or living without it would be impossible.

So how to fashion a post about love when I can barely remember romantic love? I could write about my adult children and my love for them, or my love for my pets, or for the trees. But a post about the birds and the bees I cannot write, as I am too unfamiliar with that state.

Then I realized that I am currently learning a quintessential song about romantic love! I hope to sing it at a local open mic next week. As I sing this song, I wonder "Will I ever feel this way about someone again?" Will I ever feel that irrepressible urge to have and to hold someone, a kind of worship of that someone that is so strong I'd sleep on the other side of a bed just to make them happy?

How can I sing this song and give it the emotional oomph it needs to be believable and enjoyable for an audience, when the feeling seems so remote to me today?

Turns out, it's easy for me to tap into the feeling when I am singing. Maybe I just need to sing more. Sing it, and love will come.

This song was very popular in the early 60's. The world was on the threshold of the sexual revolution, which ostensibly freed us. But as I listen to this simple song, I question whether or not we were freed. We may have been, instead, shackled to expectations and judgements about how sex should be.

Here are six renditions of the song "Please Help Me, I'm Falling," written by Hal Blair and Don Robertson, beginning with the first recording made by Hank Locklin in early 1960. A great many country stars went on to record this song, although the song is rarely sung today. I've provided a few of my favorite versions. The lyrics are, as most country song lyrics are, extremely simple, and so are also extremely powerful.

Seems to me that all these singers knew sex to be a simple affair, tied to a deep love. That deep love might be more difficult to achieve for us liberated sexual beings.

Hank Locklin