Promises Renewed

Getting married is one thing. Staying married is another. Check out what our friendly neighbourhood search engine threw up when fed the word “marriage” into its search box:

• Marriage made in heaven;
• Marriage made in hell;
• Marriage of convenience;
• Marriage of inconvenience (true! – click here);
• Marriage made in Hollywood;
• Marriage with a liar;
• Marriage at a young age;
• Marriage and divorce,

and just about another zillion variations from Google on the one same word: “marriage”.  No easy business this marriage thing. Ask my wife and she’ll probably give you some startling insights into our wedded life! We’re still a work in progress … or digress as the case may be!

All of which, makes this old tune by Billy Joel even more significant:

Just the Way You Are

Don’t go changing, to try and please me
You never let me down before
Don’t imagine you’re too familiar
And I don’t see you anymore
I wouldn’t leave you in times of trouble
We never could have come this far
I took the good times, I’ll take the bad times
I’ll take you just the way you are

Don’t go trying some new fashion
Don’t change the color of your hair
You always have my unspoken passion
Although I might not seem to care

I don’t want clever conversation
I never want to work that hard
I just want someone that I can talk to
I want you just the way you are.

I need to know that you will always be
The same old someone that I knew
What will it take till you believe in me
The way that I believe in you.

I said I love you and that’s forever
And this I promise from the heart
I could not love you any better
I love you just the way you are.

Listening to the song now – 30 years after it first hit the charts, throws a different light on the depth of its lyrics. Put another way, these words remind me of my own promises of marriage to my wife. It’s kind of a renewal of vows put into a song, like how it goes here:

I wouldn’t leave you in times of trouble
We never could have come this far
I took the good times, I’ll take the bad times, I’ll take you just the way you are

And, I’d like to believe  those Google statistics will change a bit if we all took a step back, look at what drew us to our spouses in the first place and believed in each other again.

(note: all images are from Google and their respective owners and may be subject to copyright)

Listen to the Music!

Until a few minutes ago, I’d never heard of Johann Pachelbel.   Sad, but true…. and that’s why I’ve got to share this gem of a song that Pachelbel wrote some 300 years ago!  But first, a few words on how I stumbled onto him in the first place…

Earlier today I was searching for the chords of a Christian spiritual that’d been playing on in my head all day long.  Now, as usual, one click led to another and I found myself at the Your Chords website – which boasts of itself “as one of the largest guitar chords archives on the Internet”, and – it offers more than 200,000 songs with chords and tablatures from 15,000 artistes from all over the world.

Now, if you sign up as a user (free), you can also upload songs, videos, etc. etc to Your Chords.  They even offer a free Guitar Course (!) – which would come in very handy for a frustrated, guitar hero wannabe like me!  So I signed up for it and took up the first lesson – how to tune your guitar properly.  Pretty useful stuff, especially for a clueless guitar player!  Then as part of the lesson, they provided a link to this YouTube video, which triggered all my excitement about Johann Pachelbel.  Watch this performance of JP’s Canon in D major by one guitar hero!

That got me intrigued as to who this Johan Pachelbel fellow was all about.  A few more clicks of the mouse and I found another Youtube video where the London Symphony Orchestra play JP’s original version of the Canon in D major.

Watch the Canon go off here!  It’s good for the soul!

Man…. I can say One Cannon, Two Masterpieces!  Now,  this German dude has got me all hooked up.  A little late maybe, but who says you can’t teach an old dog new tricks!  Wiki has more on him here.  Check it out. It’s worth knowing.

Now, where is my old Kapok?!

Could We Start Again, Please?

It’s time between the darkness of the tomb of Good Friday and the dawn of the resurrection of Easter.

From Jesus Christ Superstar: “Could we start again, please?”

The song, in my mind, captures the disciples finally coming to realize as to who Jesus really was, his mission and his purpose. Which leaves them bewildered, lost and feeling utterly hopeless. And wanting to start all over again with him.