Valentine’s Day

Posts Tagged ‘Valentine’s Day’

Embraceable You

Posted in Event, Favorite Things, Music, Quote, tagged George Gershwin, Nat King Cole, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Valentine's Day on February 14, 2020| Leave a Comment »

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Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance that it overflows upon the outward world.

–Nathaniel Hawthorne

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A few choice words for this Valentine’s Day from Nathaniel Hawthorne, who is not someone who normally comes immediately to mind when one thinks of love and romance. But creating sunshine and filling the heart with radiance,as he put it, is not the province of any one writer.

I have plenty to do so I am going to keep this short today. Here’s a wonderful version from the immortal Nat King Cole performing the classic Embraceable You, written by George Gershwin back in 1928. Enjoy your Valentine’s Day. Or if the holiday doesn’t really move you, enjoy your Friday. Either way, it’s a win.

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Vulnerable Love

Posted in Advice, Music, tagged C.S. Lewis, Peter Case, Valentine's Day on February 14, 2019| 1 Comment »

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“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”

― C.S. Lewis, The Four Loves

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For Valentine’s Day, some sage advice from C.S. Lewis on love and one of my favorite love songs, Two Angels from Peter Case.

Hoping you have a good day.

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These Arms of Mine

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, tagged Otis Redding, Valentine's Day on February 14, 2018| Leave a Comment »

Another Valentine’s Day. We often think of it as a day to express your fondness for the one you love. But at its heart, there is an element of yearning and loneliness in the day.

To give someone a Valentine as a kid– or maybe even when you’re a little older–is to make a plea for their attention and affection. It is an admission of need and vulnerability that is very human, as is the need to know that you are indeed loved by another.

This song, These Arms of Mine , is from Otis Redding. For me, Otis can do no wrong and nobody better expresses the yearning that I am talking about here than Otis.

Have a good day. And if you love someone, let them know every day, not just on this day.

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Sunshine of Your Love

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, tagged Cream, Ella Fitzgerald, Eric Clpaton, Louis Jordan, Muisc, Sunday Morning Music, Valentine's Day on February 11, 2018| 2 Comments »

I was looking for a song for this morning that might relate to Valentine’s Day since it is only a few days away. I wanted something that wasn’t too schmaltzy or too on the nose. And something that you might not have heard before.

I went through all of my favorites first and, while there were plenty of choices there, most of them were a little too well known. Then, as I was listening to another artist on YouTube– Louis Jordan rocking out on Caldonia— I noticed a song on the side, in the suggested-for-you videos that line right column of the screen.

Instantly, I knew this was the right one.

It’s Ella Fitzgerald doing a horned up version of the classic Sunshine of Your Love from the 1960’s band Cream, which featured Eric Clapton and Ginger Baker.

What more can you ask for? You get the undisputed Queen of Jazz rocking out a love song from the seminal rock power trio of the 1960’s and nailing it hard. You can’t do much better than Ella.

Happy Valentine’s Day right in your face.

It makes me smile. Hope you like it as well and that you have a good Sunday.

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First Time Ever I Saw Your Face

Posted in Music, Photography, tagged Brassai, Ewan MacColl, Johnny Cash, Peggy Seeger, Roberta Flack, Valentine's Day on February 12, 2017| Leave a Comment »

brassai_1899_1984__-paris-11 I thought for this Sunday’s music I’d do something with a Valentine’s Day theme. I also wanted to use the Brassai photo shown here, one of his famed Paris photos that I used in a post from a few years back. I decided to incorporate a post from a few years back about the song The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.

Most people immediately think of Roberta Flack when they think of the song and for good reason. Her 1972 version was truly beautiful and deserved every bit of the acclaim it earned. But the song didn’t originate with her and has had many, many versions through the years, including one of my favorites from Johnny Cash, which you can see below along with the Roberta Flack version.

The song’s history began in 1957. It was written by Ewan MacColl, a British folk singer who is a very interesting character in his own right. He was a married man who fell in love with the much younger Peggy Seeger, the half-sister of folk icon Pete Seeger. He later married Seeger. MacColl wrote the song about her and for her to perform. She needed a song for a play she was appearing in here in the USA so MacColl wrote the song and taught it to her via the telephone as he was barred from entering the States because of his Communist ties. As I said, he was an interesting character.

Her original version has much different phrasing than the better known Flack version and while it is not my favorite, it is nonetheless lovely. It is said that MacColl despised all the later versions of the song, preferring his wife’s. Hey, it was written for her, after all.

Cash’s version is much more ponderous, closer in tone to the Flack version. It is from his American series near the end of his life. His voice was weaker and even rawer than in his younger days but Cash used it in an incredibly expressive way, giving the song the feeling of a dirge as he looked back from a point near the end of his and his wife’s life, to an earlier time in his life and the fresh discovery of love. It is both beautiful and sad– much like life and love.

Just a great song. Have a good Sunday…

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Posted in Favorite Things, Music, Poetry, tagged Bruce Springsteen, Eddie Vedder, Glen Hansard, Music, Nazim Hikmet, Nobel Peace Prize, Poetry, The River, Valentine's Day on February 14, 2016| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers Time Comes Together 2006 Valentine’s Day.

It would be easy to go on and on about the day and the meaning of love but sometimes words just do not do the subject justice.

So I will keep it short today and share a poem from the Nobel Peace Prize winning Turkish poet, Nazim Hikmet, along with this Sunday’s musical selection, a cover of Bruce Springsteen‘s Drive All Night from Glenn Hansard (best known for his songs from the film and stage production Once) with backing vocals from Eddie Vedder. A very good cover of one of my favorite songs from The River album of 1980.

Have a good Valentine’s Day…

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I love you
like dipping bread into salt and eating
Like waking up at night with high fever
and drinking water, with the tap in my mouth
Like unwrapping the heavy box from the postman
with no clue what it is
fluttering, happy, doubtful
I love you
like flying over the sea in a plane for the first time
Like something moves inside me
when it gets dark softly in Istanbul
I love you
Like thanking God that we live.

—Nazim Hikmet

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Two Angels

Posted in Music, Poetry, tagged India, Music, Painting, Peter Case, Poetry, True Blood, Valentine's Day on February 14, 2015| Leave a Comment »

It’s Valentine’s Day. I went back through the blog archives and discovered that I sometimes don’t post anything on this day or sometimes post something off the subject of this day. One year, it was baseball. Well, I do love the game so maybe it was a Valentine of sorts.

I thought I would post something this year, a poem that I posted several years ago. It’s an anonymous verse from India that strikes just the right chord of love and devotion for me without turning to pablum.

Although I Conquer All the Earth

Although I conquer all the earth,

Yet for me there is only one city.

In that city there is for me only one house;

And in that house, one room only;

And in that room, a bed.

And one woman sleeps there,

The shining joy and jewel of all my kingdom.

—Anonymous, Ancient India

Also, below is a song from Peter Case, Two Angels, an elegantly simple song that is a favorite of mine and also on subject for the day. Surprisingly, it is a fairly little known song though I understand it was used on an episode of True Blood. If that doesn’t scream romance, I don’t know what does.

The painting above is an oil on panel, 10″ by 58″, that I did back in 2001. I cannot find or recall its title at the moment but am calling it Two Angels for today.