I was so deep in the academic hole for the first six months of the year that I completely missed news about the movie Southside with You, the story of Michelle and Barack Obama's romance. The film pays homage to the president and First Lady's initial courtship and opens in limited release August 26. I.must.see.this.movie. So, I'll be scouting websites, Twitter, creating a Google alert, whatever I can do so I can't miss the film when it comes to New Orleans.
Produced by singer/songwriter John Legend and written and directed by Richard Tanne, the movie premiered with good reviews at the Sundance Festival in January. Based on the trailer, I'll say it's a winner already.
I remember one of the first times I heard a story about the first couple's courtship and said, "Sounds like a romance novel or a romantic comedy." I believe at least one of those times I was watching the Oprah Winfrey Show. Their love story made me happy because we don't hear enough, read enough, or see enough stories about healthy, black, romantic relationships.
Tika Sumpter, a young actress who became much more visible after appearing in Tyler Perry's soap opera on OWN, makes a wonderful Michelle Obama based on what I see in the trailer. I don't know much about Parker Sawyers' work (He plays Barack.), but I do recall him in The Assets TV show. He also is believable in the trailer.
The first couple was not consulted about the making of the film, but according to Tanne, they're aware of it, are excited about the movie, but "baffled by its existence." In a Vanity Fair interview, the writer/director says he gathered all his information from public domain sources, probably the Oprah show and other interviews with the Michelle and/or Barack. He thinks his script is mostly accurate. From what I 've seen, he's caught the warmth and humor of the stories as I recall them.
I've already subscribed to Fandango news to make sure I get a ticket. I mean, Southside with You better show here.
We like to call our romantic fixations "crushes, torches, or love-sickness," and this video poem is probably more along the romantic vein rather than stalker, but I know some psychologists who would call any inability to stop thinking about someone and still longing for the person's company to be an obsession. Some even say infatuation is a form of mental illness.
The speaker of this poem is not in a state of mind to give up yet.
I wrote this poem in 2006. Between coming out of a harrowing divorce and attempting to date again, I may have been a touch crazy back then (not about the ex, though), but I still like this poem. Also, I had a muse of sorts, one I wish would go back to writing a few love poems again, but the person's gone uber spiritual, rather lofty. The work is good; I just miss the poet's old stuff.
The video for "Stuck in a Black Bird's Groove" is a remix. I made an older video for the poem and posted it to YouTube two years ago, but I was just learning how to use Windows Movie Maker back then, so, the video had some issues. I never rally liked it. Last week I decided I really, really didn't like it, so I made that video with its 200 views private, and produced this one.
For those reading who like to document process, first I edited the poem a little, nothing major, and then I went in search of royalty-free music, pictures, and video clips. I became a member of Dreamstimes.com for still shots and VideoBlocks.com for video.
Doing poetry videos every once in a while fulfills me in some way. I do it even though the videos don't draw a lot of hits (with the exception of "Misery," which did better than average for original poetry). And this one comes on the heels of the "Break-Up Poem," which I did last week and hardly anyone's watched. At the end of August I also produced a video of another poet's work, "An Angel for New Orleans," for the 9th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.
I didn't post the written poem of "Stuck in a Black Bird's Groove" on YouTube. I've posted them here.
Stuck in a Black Bird's Groove
by Nordette N. Adams
I cannot speak to you.
But my eyes still seek out you.
My soul's been meek for you.
But I cannot speak to you this truth.
When the evening come and all my sorrows stretch
prostrate before silver streams of early moon weeping,
When birds come to roost in charcoal blue,
tangled strands of my mourning,
my head still tilts toward your breath.
I listen and I long.
I listen for your song.
You do not seek out me.
You've not been meek for me.
Your outlook's bleak for me.
You do not seek out me, your sooth.
When the morning come and my joy seeps out,
vanishing with coral dreams of dawn,
When birds take flight and leave me
to grieving gray days of my journey,
my soul turns toward your heartbeat.
I listen and I long.
I listen for your song.
The blues is black with me.
Black blues fall back on me.
This deck's not stacked for me.
The blues is black with me.
It's you.
When noon bring sun to seek my scarlet sins,
and sun drops in pale sky to cast its shadows,
When black birds fly past with wings spread wide,
and I stand on Earth in envy,
my dreaming conjures your heartfire.
No, I have not recently broken up with anyone. This is one of my old poems that I had removed from the Web, but I discovered a few weeks ago that someone posted it in a discussion forum about beauty in art apparently before I deleted it. Written in 2005, it's one of many poems that I wrote while trying to emotionally process my divorce as well as navigate the dating world (something I still don't do very well).
I decided since someone else appreciated the poem, perhaps it will comfort others. I've edited it based on what I've learned about poetry since then, and I also created this video, which is something I'm into lately.
If you appreciate this poem or you know of someone else who would appreciate it or who needs to hear it, please share this link. File these verses under love and recovery.
Oriental Turtle Dove (Streptopelia orientalis) by Nikhil Source
"Dead Birds Sigh A Prayer"* by Nordette N. Adams
I have been told,
"Do not post poems on the Internet!"
See, the serious poet
embeds her words
only at the base of ivory
towers where an usher pushes
a diamond-crusted elevator button,
calling offerings to the spire
of the poet gods.
"A poem is a sacrifice,"
I have been told, and
"Love poems are the worst things in the world to share,
ruining reputations."
I see
you too,
poet,
have been told
how to withhold romance
from mortals. Yet
our love poems crust with dust in digital drawers for
googling imaginations.
We are a sad pair,
me saving feathers
on a green cliff,
you moulting,
solitary,
midair.
So, ignore these words,
not
a poem,
just
my working-through-
losing-you drafts,
you man with feathers
who for me was what
Dickinson heard
singing.
I don't know what overtook me today, but for the first time in maybe 30 years, I heard Aretha Franklin's "All the King's Horses," which I've posted above, and started crying. My first thought is that I needed to cry because I've been holding so much in over the last year (family deaths, health concerns, a variety of fears).
Once in my life I was known for crying often--sobbing because someone hurt my feelings or rejected me, weeping at sad movies, and sniffling over Hallmark commercials. I learned that I had to toughen up and stop that or nothing would ever get done. Plus many people that I have known think crying is a sign that the weepy one is a manipulator. Really, that was not the case when it came to me.
I know it was not the case because my mother used to say that people use the behavior that gets them the results they want, but no one ever gave me anything because I cried. I have not been the kind of woman that people rush to assist, and much of my crying after a certain age, I did alone because I didn't want a lecture from anyone telling me not to be so sensitive.
But, Lord, this old Aretha tune got to me.
I cannot lie, the song made me think of the unraveling of my marriage, even though I know divorce (a type of death) was the right thing for me. The song hurled me back to when I was a teen listening to it on my stereo, having no idea that someday in the future, the feelings in the song would be mine.
You never know how deep a wound is, even your own--sometimes especially not your own because stopping to investigate its depth would toss you into a pit of non-functioning. As the saying goes, "Don't pick at a scab," and so we learn not to contemplate the harder stuff of life: the pain and sorrow, the moments when we think perhaps life is meaningless and the silence that bounces back to us when we don't sense the presence of God or the Universe with us. Who wants to pick at a scab and watch new pus erupt?
Perhaps, as a person drawn to poetry, I can't help but think on such things. Perhaps it is part of my sometimes gloomy nature. I think now of Jericho Brown's opening lines of his poem "Again" from Please:
You are not as tired of the poem
As I am of the memory.
A returning toothache
On either side of the mouth.
The speaker of the poem is returning to a troubling childhood memory and is aware that others are weary with his worrying over the past.
Yes, some events mark us, and our thoughts return to them. However, we do not return to wallow in being wronged or in the guilt that we've wronged someone else, as someone seemed to suggest in a comment once on another post about divorce; we return to assess where we've been and where we're going and to try to make sense of our existence.
Ask anyone who's experienced a death or another deep loss, the brain returns and rehashes; it recirculates memories as the heart does blood, those memories that shape who we become. I think that while it's true we should not dwell too long with misery, it's equally true that if we ignore or fail to acknowledge that we still hear the echo of painful moments and wonder what they may have taught us or that we still sense sometimes the phantom of something that feels unresolved, then we run the risk of emotional clotting the same way we run the risk of getting blood clots if we ignore symptoms of physical circulation problems.
Healing takes for each person however long that it takes.
I didn't want to run from whatever it was I felt when I heard the song. I had to probe it at a deeper level, which is something that poetry also causes us to do, according to poet Julie Kane. And whoever wrote the "All the King's Horses" lyrics was also a poet (I think Aretha herself wrote the lyrics).
We sat on the wall of happiness
We sat on the wall of love
We sat on the wall of security
So high above
With his arms all around me
It was like a fairy tale
Two people so in love
Tell me how could it fail
The wall started shaking
I heard love cried out
Happiness is given away
Security is coming down
He fell, I fell
And all there is left to tell
Is all the king's horses
All the king's men
Couldn't put our two hearts
Together again
Marvin Gaye's song "Just to Keep You Satisfied" is one of the best tunes ever written about the break-up of a marriage. It's believable that these people were at one point in a loving relationship, and it also conveys the pain of leaving while knowing that leaving is all you can do.
I have a friend who tells me that people who were really in love still love each other on some level even when they part. Going by my friend's assessment then, when the song's speaker tells his estranged wife that if she ever needs him, he'll be by her side, he is revealing just how deeply he has loved her. He wants no harm to come to her. If she needs him, he'll be there to help her. That's the line that tells her what they had was real. He is a mature, loving man, not just someone who gave up when the going got tough. He left because he couldn't think of a way to solve the dysfunction in a relationship that's become too painful to bear.
If you've ever had anyone love you that way, then you've experienced having someone really love you. Those who did not love you that deeply were mere impostors, and how sad to discover that you were married to an impostor.
"Just to Keep You Satisfied" is both painful and beautiful, just the way true love or star-crossed love often seems to be. Too bad they couldn't work through the pain.
Blessed is the pair of lovers who can work through the dysfunction and stay together; they shall inherit bliss. That's the most romantic thought I've had in three years, I think.
Let's be thankful that in spite of wars, corruption, and violent crime, humans also do good things.
"Give a Little" bit, the song in the Coke commercial, was first recorded by Supertramp and written and composed by its co-founder Roger Hodgson. The commercial uses the version that Hodgson recorded with a children's choir.
This story reminds me of Ryan O'Neal and Ali MacGraw's movie, Love Story, but this story is true and the people are African-American.
I discovered this true love story through a friend who shared it on Facebook via Clutch Magazine. LaKeasha Monique Rutledge-Draft and NFL free agent Chris Draft, the couple in a very moving weding video, were married on November 27, 2011, and one month later, December 27, Keasha died from lung cancer. ... As you can see in the wedding video produced by KRJ Productions, members of the bridal party wheeled the bride down the aisle, but she stood, walked, and took her vows sitting next to the groom. Later in the video you'll see her walk arm-in-arm with Chris down the aisle while a friend holds her oxygen tank. She also dances with her husband standing right behind her at the reception, and you can see the medical tube coming from her nose and circling around her cheeks.
Keasha was born in South Carolina and worked as a ... Read more at WritingJunkie.net.
Watching the romance, the successful marriage of Nick Ashford and Valerie Simpson known as Ashford and Simpson, gave me as much joy as listening to their music over the years. I've posted this interview and profile with the pair before (when Saturday Night Live spoofed Barack and Michelle Obama with "Solid"), but with the death of Nick Ashford, 70, from throat cancer, I felt I should post it again.
The video covers how they met. Nick, who was homeless at the time, walked into Valerie's church. The relationship was first a writing partnership and friendship and later blossomed into a romance. She wrote the music; he wrote the lyrics.
Below is video from the pair's entertainment club, the Sugar Bar in New York City, earlier this year that shows Valerie singing "Happy Birthday" to Nick.
And I admit that I'm weeping here as I watch this video of "Is It Still Good to You?" I remember when I bought the album.
I was married and in my early 30s when Lorena Bobbitt, age 24, cut off her husband John Wayne Bobbitt's penis in Virginia. What level of rage does it take to do that to a man? Today I learned another woman has done it again, Catherine Kieu Becker, 48, of Southern, California.
CBS News reports that she "drugged her estranged husband, tied him to a bed, cut off his penis and put it through a garbage disposal." I guess she didn't want it collected and reattached, which is what happened in the Bobbitt case. (Lorena threw the organ from a car window on a road. Surgeons successfully reattached John's penis during a 9-hour surgery.)
He (Becker) was conscious when his penis was removed," said Garden Grove police Lt. Jeff Nightengale.
Nightengale says Becker put the penis in the garbage disposal and turned it on.
According to CBS station KCBS, Becker called 911 and told responding officers that her husband, whose name has not been released, "deserved it."
That's hate beyond hate, and it's also possible she is mentally ill.
Despite going through one of the world's most bitter divorces, I never contemplated mutilating my ex. No man is worth bringing yourself so low or the jail time. But maybe for Becker, the pain she felt he caused her was too much too bear.
Bobbitt now Becker, is it a letter "B" thing? Apparently not. Kim Tran, 35, committed the same crime in 2005 against her boyfriend, 44, in Anchorage, Alaska. She flushed it down the toilet.
Naturally, the husband in the Becker case, who is recovering in the hospital, is in shock. She invited him to dinner and cooked for him. I guess he thought that meant all was forgiven. (See, my mother told me to never eat anything an estranged spouse cooks.) Becker faces charges of "aggressive mayhem."
Lorena Bobbitt was charged with "malicious wounding," and later a jury found her not guilty by reason of temporary insanity.
But oh, updating for poetry. Hat tip to a friend who points us to Lucille Clifton's poem "Lorena." I add it not to condone carving up men, but to give a nod to poetics and the politics of being female. Lorena Bobbitt said John, who was a notorious womanizer and unfaithful, sexually assaulted her and that's why she cut off his penis. He was not convicted of spousal abuse charges against him, however.
Set to Sara Bareilles "Gravity," Kayla Radomski and Kupono Aweau perform a So You Think You Can Dance Season 5 contemporary routine choreographed by Mia Michaels, who envisioned it as a story of a woman's addiction to drugs. I thought the routine was stunning and moving then and I still think it's stunning and moving. Sadly, sometimes romantic relationships with people run this course as well.
Anyway, I watched the first auditions for this year's So You Think You Can Dance, Season 8, and saw a pair auditioning to the same song. They did a decent job, but they did not top the Season 5 routine. However, like the Tyce D'Orio routine to Maxwell's "This Woman's Work," also of Season 5, half of the emotional connection to the piece comes from the song itself.
I don't remember the names of the pair who auditioned last night. Only the woman wanted to compete on the show. Nevertheless, when I heard their song choice, it reminded me of the Season 5 performance to "Gravity," and so, I decided to post it. I also remembered that I never bought the song itself, and decided to buy it last night. I played it so many times my son came in to ask me this morning the name of the song. He liked enough to not complain that I had looped it for hours.
The video above shows Michael A. Stefanone discussing the results of a study he and other researchers conducted through the University of Buffalo, "Contingencies of Self-Worth and Social-Networking-Site Behavior" that has been published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking. Shari Roan of the L.A. Times reports that "a study :
on how people use social networking websites such as Facebook confirms what many of us suspected. Women who post loads of photos of themselves on their sites are conveying some strong personal characteristics, according to new research. These women are more likely to base their self-worth on appearance and use social networking to compete for attention.
A friend of mine shared Roan's article on Facebook. She had recently posted pictures of herself at a book-signing and shared the article for irony's sake. Nevertheless, her reasons for posting her pictures should tell us all not to judge anyone's nature or character strictly by this study. While her photos include her, they're really about her work as a writer.
Also, my friend is over 35 and this study focused on "311 men and women with an average of 23." I think that it may ignore, if I go by the L.A. Times article, that women around age 23 are more focused on catching a date or a permanent mate and as anthropologists tell us, most men do not first look at your family history, career choices, and I.Q. test results when they're thinking about dating or marrying you. They routinely study face and body. So, hormones driving the female desire to mate with an understanding of the male gaze is encouraging this kind of behavior as much as anything else, maybe more than anything else.
I love good music whatever the genre--blues, pop, rock, R&B, jazz, bluegrass, opera--but let's face it, some song lyrics about people in love are really about people locked in obsession and would be labeled more accurately "confessions of a control freak." For instance, you do know that "Every Breath You Take" by Sting and the Police is really about a stalker, don't you?
I'm not criticizing the songwriters as much as I'm wondering why these kinds of songs are so popular. Is it because we confuse the early stages of the lover experience, which is infatuation, with love? Infatuation is the stuff of fleeting passion and sometimes insane behavior, not the stuff of a good foundation long-term.
So, I like B.B. King, but while I was working today "Don't Answer the Door" was playing in the background, and I thought Damn! A domestic violence counselor could use this song as an example of what a controlling man sounds like. The lyrics are a classic example of someone isolating a woman from her friends and family. The song's narrator doesn't even want the doctor to come to see about her if she's sick and he's not home: "You just suffer until I get home," says the speaker.
(I'm not picking on B.B. King because "Don't Answer the Door" is just a song, and he is after all singing the blues. The blues has a special kind of pathos. Its ethos is grounded in tales of human misery.)
Don't Answer The Door B.B. King (Lyrics as posted at BluesForPeace.com)
Baby, I don't wanna a soul, Hangin around my house when I'm not home. Oh, I don't want a soul, baby, Hangin' around my house when I'm not home. I don't want you to open the door for nobody, woman, Oh, when you're home and you know you're all alone.
Your sister might wanna visit us, But the little girl she talk too much. If she just come by to visit us, Tell her to meet us Sunday, Sunday, down at the church. 'Cause I don't want a soul, baby, Hangin' around my house when I'm not at home. Yes, I don't want you to open the door for nobody, baby, Oh, when you're home and you know you're all alone.
Your mother might wanna visit us, But you tell you mamma I get home bout the break a day. And that's too late to visit anybody, baby, So, tell you mamma to please, please, please stay away. 'Cause I don't want a soul, baby, Hangin' around my house when I'm not at home. Yes, I don't want you to open the door for anybody, woman, Oh, when you're home and you know you're all alone.
You might feel a little sick, baby, And you know you're home all alone, I don't want the doctor at my house, baby, You just suffer, suffer, suffer till I get home. 'Cause I don't want a soul, baby, Hangin' around my house when I'm not at home. Yes, I don't want you to open the door for nobody, woman, Baby, when you're home and all alone. Yeah!
Note the difference between what Aretha Franklin's lyrics say in "Dr. Feelgood": she doesn't want anybody always sitting around her and her man. She doesn't mind company. Company is alright with her every once in a while. What she doesn't want is people hanging around so much they interfere with her sex life. It's not about having total control.
However, for the record, I know that some women can also be abusive and controlling. And female singers also have their share of songs about obsession. In fact, Aretha, one friend reminded me that Aretha also recorded "Until You Come Back To Me," which has these lyrics:
Though you don't call anymore I sit and wait in vain I guess I'll rap on your door Tap on your window pane I want to tell you Baby The changes I've been going through Missing you. Listen you
'till you come back to me That's what I'm gonna do
Advice, ladies. If your current lover/spouse or your ex tells you that he always thinks of you when he hears Van Hunt's "Highlights," run to the nearest exit.
With a body like Helen Mirren's-- never burdened by babies stretching skin to an alien curve--she is much at 50 the same as 30, bold and glistening, fevered with lust.
With a body like Venus of Willendorf, stretched after bearing fresh blood, she forgets her name, contemplates skin alien as cratered moons cooling, damp and mysterious--the unexplored cave.
First, you step into the romantic stream and infatuation carries you away. He's saying you've got him "Going in Circles" by Luther Vandross. It's the same song you used to hear on the radio when you were nine recorded by "Friends of Distinction." You're also in circles over him, and so, you really want this love affair because it feels like what you think love should feel like based on movies, songs, and romance novels.
Wedding bells! You've gotten exactly what you thought you wanted. It's perfect. You're at the place of "He Is" by Heather Headley.
Time goes by, and you've moved past infatuation and the newlywed phase. Good news! You're still committed: Anita Baker's "Giving You the Best that I Got."
A few babies come. You're both working and your time for each other is limited. One day you look up and realize something's missing. You want to work it out, but he's not cooperating. He's put up a wall. Or maybe you don't really want to work it out for real because you may not want what you once thought you wanted. The only thing holding you together is not wanting to devastate the children, but after a while, the stress is too much for you, and you go there. You tell him "Go!" or maybe you pack and go. Whatever, your message to him is Laura Izibor with the final decision, "Don't Stay."
If you're both mature, the break up is painful but you don't back out. Now you're at ether "I will Survive" by Gloria Gaynor or "On My Own" by Patti LaBelle and Michael McDonald, depending on how the break-up went down.
You weep a bit. Nurse your wounds, and then it dawns on you that you are free! So, off you trot hot as "Life of the Party" by Prince!
WOW! Look at you. You're on fire. People keep trying to date you. Some even want to marry you. So, you take a break for awhile to reflect on your relationships. Is it possible you're heading toward the same flat life of settling that was your marriage? Some of these guys are not what you want at all. See Jill Scott's "Whenever You're Around." You sigh, "Been there, done that" and ask yourself, "What do I really want?"
Time is running out, people suggest. But you'd rather not be bothered at all than to deal with game playing and casual dating anymore. If you're going to have a relationship, then you want the whole meal, not just the chocolate chip cookie. That's you in "Come Right or Not at All" by Phyllis Hyman. You'd give your all to the right one, but damn it! Finding the right one takes more time and energy than you'd care to expend on something as unnecessary as a mate.
So, now you're 50 and to your surprise, men still knock on your door. You notice that sometimes you don't even bother to answer it because you're busy doing what you like and really don't care to be interrupted by what they like. Is it possible that you don't really want a relationship with all the required work after all? Maybe you never wanted that. Maybe you were just nudged in that direction because of a biological urge to procreate combined with media and societal messages to marry and produce a family. That's when it hits you. There is a perfect relationship for you after all at your age and for your temperament, some exclusivity without the chains, which means not walking down the aisle and saying "I do." It's "Live By Close, Visit Often" by K. T. Oslin. Ahh. It feels right. You understand now that you are the meal. A mate at your age would be a great chocolate chip cookie, especially if he brings his own milk, but if the cookie's not made to your liking, then abstaining works too.
One morning, you're stretching before your first cup of coffee, and what do you know? The phone rings. It's your "male" friend that you've been spending more time with, and you've got that warm fuzzy feeling you thought you'd never have again. Are you healed? Suddenly you know that you're really free to give someone what you never could before, the best of your love. You can do this because now you know yourself well enough to know exactly what your best love is. Go, Emotions!
Is it my heart that you have cruely cursed, My blood confined to boiling rage in hate? Or have you left a chamber fit to thirst For one last romance a fresh love may sate? You came as one with ill intent in mind And stole from dreams a peace I'd nurtured long, Taking no care to gently seek and find The hidden notes that culminate my song.
But I unlike a starry-eyed young girl Can bear the treachery you've planted here And shine in time this sand into a pearl The envy of your bitter mind to fear.
Thus will I be at once and evermore A lighthouse to the wounded who seek shore.
This is my mood this morning, Eric Clapton's "Pilgrim." I used to play this song a lot during the end of my marriage, thinking it was about me and not feeling loved. Lately, I've been thinking this song is more about my ex. At least he would see it that way, that he was a sorrowful pilgrim for my love who was cast aside. That's how he plays his story for others. Does he believe that?
He once told me that the Doobie Brothers song, "What a Fool Believes" made him think of me. What is that to tell your wife? And he used to go around the house singing "If you wanna be happy for the rest of your life, never make a pretty women your wife."
I'm not sure he ever really loved me, but looking at some song lyrics he's written but I won't link to, I think he thinks he loved me. However, I think what he thought was signs of his love from him were his projections onto me of his desire to be elsewhere in later years. If he were saying "I love you," I was only hearing, "Where you been? Who is that you're talking to?"
My mother and a friend of mine used to say, "If he's checking up on you that much, you need to start checking up on him." But I didn't. I figured if he's gone, he's gone. I refused to be the woman hanging around the man's leg, letting him drag her along as he walked out the door.
A new study bears out what my mother and friend were suggesting, that men are more harsh on their wives about minor infractions that could signal she's straying when they are thinking about straying themselves.
Other McGill studies confirmed differences in how men and women react to such threats. In one, attractive actors or actresses were brought in to flirt with study participants in a waiting room. Later, the participants were asked questions about their relationships, particularly how they would respond to a partner’s bad behavior, like being late and forgetting to call.
Men who had just been flirting were less forgiving of the hypothetical bad behavior, suggesting that the attractive actress had momentarily chipped away at their commitment. (Science of a Happy Marriage)
They don't mean the man suggested consciously that the attractive woman he was looking at or talking to was chipping away at his marriage, but that because he felt attracted to another woman, the chipping had begun, and he was more likely to assume his wife or partner was cheating or should at least be closely watched.
That's projection. I want to steal so I think you're stealing.
I don't know about Clapton. These lyrics may have nothing to do with his actual life, but if I were speaking to the person these lyrics make me think of today, I would say, "Well, if you were in love that deeply, if you were to the point where you felt you were on a pilgrim like a man seeking a goddess, then why didn't you find a way to say so?"
He'd probably say he did in many love letters, but for me, his love letters that were written while we were dating turned into statements like "You didn't do my laundry" over the years. (Sad coming from a man who could afford to pay someone to do his laundry but instead wanted to make his marriage about laundry.) And a man writing after the fact how much he loved you when you know damn well he was seeing another woman instead of working on his marriage is not worth the time it took him to think of the words for his sorrowful lyrics.
Nevertheless, in more vulnerable moments I am tempted at times to write the ex and say, "I'm sorry that we couldn't work out our marriage," but as I wrote in my poem "I See It Now," which is also posted on this blog, that would be a mistake. I wish we could have worked it out is not the same as saying I wish we were still married, but I don't think he would get that difference. And whatever peace I might get from saying it would be washed away by the craziness he'd act out afterward. So, I must forgive him from a distance.
Another friend of mine who's been divorced for longer than I have tells me that my analyzing my marriage five years after the divorce is probably a sign that I'm healing. She's convinced that's why I never have seriously entertained a relationship with another man, no matter what it looked like. I've got deep wounds.
If she read this post right now, however, she'd say, "Don't let him do that Jedi mind trick on you. Any sad lyrics that m*th*rf*ck*r's written are more about his need to control."
You know, I am not one of those people rushing to embrace gossip from the National Enquirer just because it broke the John Edwards affair because I think we should look more at its long history of spreading malicious rumors rather than the one or two times where it's gotten its facts right. Consequently, while not surprised that the NE is sharing gossip, claiming that President Barack Obama is having an affair with a former campaign aide, Vera Baker, I think this Obama rumor is just that--rumor--a sensational tidbit published to sell papers. Baker denies the seedy tale.
My distaste for the Enquirer and how it compiles its stories is not news.
However, today I consider that the potential damage of rumors spread by the Enquirer has grown. Having broke the Edwards story, the Enquirer has become more dangerous. When it spreads rumors today, otherwise smart people who would have dismissed its stories in the past, now may believe them because they think that gossip sheet's become a credible news source. But it's not. It's not. It's not. It's not!
And I will keep saying that thinking people should not accept the National Enquirer as a reliable news source because its journalism ethics stink, and I'm snobby that way. Therefore, I don't care what the Pulitzer committee says to stroke the NE.
TMZ.com seems to be more careful about its stories. While it did run that photo of Obama last year, "Baby Got Barack," I've seen nothing yet from the website saying the president's cheating on his wife, Michelle. Neither has Joy-Ann at The Reid Report seen any bites from TMZ on this one. She takes a look at how Mediate.com has been sucked into this mess.
One of Mediate's contributors, Frances Martel, recounted the Enquirer story as though it was fact. Now Mediate's on the defensive. Joy says Martel is a "former College Republican," and she calls the young thing Mediate's "Ann Coulter."
Ah, the conservative connection? Naturally some of them are eager to give the Enquirerprops here. Field Negrotakes a swing at Matt Drudge for reporting this story. If you don't believe politics plays into the matter, consider that Drudge claims "anti-Obama operatives" area offering $1 million for proof of the affair.
Back in 2008, someone commenting at the Democratic Underground felt that even gossip tabloid coverage may be politically motivated sometimes.
But let's leave conservatives alone on this one for a while and remain focused on the National Enquirer's history of thinly-sourced stories. I'm old enough to recall Carol Burnett's libel lawsuit against the rag. She won, and libel cases are hard to win, especially if you're a public figure. How much have they published that's false but people simply don't have the patience and resources to sue? Yep, one accurate, groundbreaking story (Edwards), does not a reputation make, especially not with the rest of its horrible reporting lining birdcages in our rear view mirrors.
At Gather, Nick Faraday is very skeptical. He writes that "it shows how:
most of the stuff you have to put up with being the President has nothing to do with actually being the president! There are too many partisan games to be played, too much money to be made! Why not actually focus on if the guy is doing a good job, instead of wondering if Obama had an affair with Vera Baker?
I just don't believe the Enquirer rumor. I've swallowed hook, line and singer the great love story that the first couple projects. It appeals to the last crumbly romantic bone in my body, I suppose. I just don't think he'd cheat on Michelle Obama, which would also be a betrayal of his daughters' trust. He's smarter than that.
Obama could prove me wrong. He's human, but until I've been proven wrong, I think the National Enquirer story is garbage.
In the meantime, John Edwards's affair won't go away. Oprah had his mistress, Rielle Hunter, on her show last week.
Update: Thank you, Mom-101. That Village Voice assessment is so solid that I had to add it here as a link.
The lingering urge to trust the Enquirer after their brush with the truth in the John Edwards affair has all but been squandered on this recycled story, and it didn't even have a chance to grow legs beyond the weekend. It will be interesting to watch whether Rush Limbaugh, Glenn Beck, et al. dare to touch this thing with the Enquirer, of all places, already issuing what resembles a correction in the world of "real journalism." (VV)
