in this demo I just wanted to sing about rain and lovers in the rain and lovers reuniting in the rain and lovers reuniting in the rain with hungry hearts and lovers reuniting in the rain with hungry hearts and unrestrained affection
Lyrics
the heavens will open
and we’ll kiss in the rain
seize the moment
on my lips
in that blue dress
thundering
Ooooooohhhhhhh
through the door
around your waist
against the wall
shirtless
making love
in the home you built for us
**recorded at home on a very rainy Sunday in late February, inspired by Noah & Allie**
Thoughts this week
I’m only sharing this demo with you because I don’t want to, if i’m being transparent. It is imperfect. It is far from finished. I don’t like either of those two things in my work. I wanted to share the whole song with you but my week simply would not allow for it. After my initial inspiration to try something new creatively, writing about my favourite love scene in a movie (thanks rainy Sunday + Noah & Allie kissing in the rain) I encountered a relentless stream of disruptions. My kids needed me, the housework needed me, plans for the next few weeks needed me (think 10 year old’s birthday + my attempt at making her a Lilo & Stitch themed birthday cake). I, on the other hand, needed time to sit with FL Studio to get to grips with the basics of this music production thingy. I had to admit defeat down the rabbit hole of troubleshooting WHY my audio refuses to cut off where i’ve stopped recording. I’m two uploads deep into this particular issue…have you noticed that both audios conveniently stop at 2:24 giving you a nice chunk of silence at the end?! You’re welcome! In an effort not to lose sight of my reason for writing this post and focus on the little song let’s press on.
This post is my compromise with God. To sense his bigger vision while surrendering to the immediacy and restrictions of reality. To let life be as it is, to accept the currents of responsibility that command my time and allow the creative process to be my “outcome”. I’m learning to let the seemingly insignificant things in my life have their own worthy and unique place in my collection of moments.
After my Dad died, I wasn’t preoccupied with the things I already knew about him or the memories I could recall. I was gripped by the pain of something so much deeper. Who was he in all the quiet and unseen moments of his life? He spent most of his life alone. In every lost detail of his life, and ours, something monumental is at hand. It wasn’t the big moments, nor the accomplishments or achievements rhymed off at his funeral that marked his time most meaningfully. But the impossibly hard to quantify minutes of his diminishing hours that called to me.
I can frequently be heard saying to my clients “everything counts!”… regardless of how small your effort is, how insignificant you believe it to be, it counts, it matters, more than you will ever be able to comprehend… and an intimate relationship to your life demands that you share it once you know it.
I always felt I never really knew my Dad. That he was hard to know. I knew what he wanted me to know. In the end, i’m not sure I ever really felt more than an intermittent closeness with him. To be known we have to risk revealing ourselves…
Closeness + intimacy
When we are close, I know important things about you. When we are intimate I know important things about myself. When we are close, I know you in your presence. When we are intimate I know myself in your presence. The essence of intimacy is feeling closer to yourself while in relationship to someone or something else. Typically we feel our way into this much more easily through song, art, poetry, a sunset, a romantic film….than with people.
Mostly this is because we find self-disclosure difficult. We struggle to reveal our inmost selves. We avoid admitting certain known truths about what we are experiencing. We attempt to conceal and rationalise bald emotion or raw feelings. We keep quiet on things that could make our lives an intimate encounter and ongoing revelation.
We often treat our inner lives as problematic rather than mysterious. I invite my clients, through self-disclosure to recognise and attend to their inherent mysteriousness… the hard to know-ness of it all. Building the resilience required to go deeper into connection demands that we have accepted the inherent mystery of the other and of life… and we do that through intimately probing at the mystery of who we are……
In my work I emphasis the requirement for closeness in order to maintain baseline stability in connection, it affirms and sustains relationships. What I also know though is that intimacy is required to transform a relationship and cause its growth. Intimacy defined as making known what is innermost, revealing our inner life.
Deep down we want to be known and we can be sure that the burning desire to know and to encounter the one we are romantically and sexually attracted, holds the raw and necessary material for closeness, intimacy and (in Noah & Allie’s case) redemptive love.
We can see from the little film clip of Noah and Allie that their lack of available or allowable closeness destabilised their connection - for a time breaking it completely. However in the light of new revelation, vulnerability inducing questions and a determination to share raw emotion the result is a deep and erotic intimacy. On the flip side many couples have closeness in spades without genuine intimacy and so their connection cannot transform or grow, instead stagnating and becoming stale and boring - this is the cliched reason why so many ‘good marriages’ break down and lose their spark.
The oxygen of true intimacy is required to ignite and recharge connection. Noah and Allie have come to new discoveries about themselves in each others presence which supercharges their ability to connect and share themselves intimately with each other. Up until the moment of inner mystery revealed we can see their closeness on the boat trip. During their moment of inner mystery revealed it is intimacy that envelopes them.
In our current relationship climate we are mostly versed in ego-disclosure. The modern dynamic is predicated on talking about our thoughts, emotions, experiences, needs and desires, which has no guarantee of increasing concurrent self-awareness and often serves as a resentment inducing list of unreasonable demands and expectations that cannot ever be met. The motive for sharing is important. Self-disclosure has become a catharsis for many people who simply crave a therapeutic release. Often the lack of true self-intimacy, shared from the ego, results in a resounding I-ness… a kind of me, me, me-ness. We become energetically drained in this scenario, whether we are the giver or the receiver. Contrastingly, sharing from your authentic self increases we-ness, we experience a tandem giving and receiving which energises connection in both individuals. Allie & Noah capture that energy superbly well in the little scene that inspired this writing!
In reality most of us don’t really know each other, we only know what people what to share with us and we gatekeep our inner lives more fastidiously than ever, reluctant to tell the truth. My clients come to me to talk about who they really are, or who they sense themselves to be underneath the weight of existence. They come in a sincere attempt to finally get in touch with their most authentic self - which is the characteristic of genuine intimacy.
We can only be known and loved for who we truly are to the extent that we are willing to reveal our true selves to the ones we hold dear. And we can only do this as deeply as we can probe our own hearts. We have to have sufficient self-awareness to share what we know of our inner lives and be willing to admit to it and share it without caveats.
** a little snap shot of some of my prayer and therapy resources and notes on Sunday alongside my indispensable bullet journal**
In the home you built for us
Working in reverse order, the line the home you built for us is literally my acknowledgement of Noah’s steadfastness in love. He committed to building a house for himself and Allie, not because there was ever any guarantee that they’d have the chance to build a home together but because his word was his guarantee on something he knew about himself. We all need to know this about ourselves and about life. How we commit to something bigger than us reveals us. If how you do anything is how you do everything… how are you doing, and how are you doing it??
The house also represents the stability that is required for closeness to be established and therein intimacy.
Oooooohhhhhh oooooh oooooohhh
Can’t overlook well placed oooh’s in a song. This was such a spontaneous and enjoyable development in the little bridge to the chorus. On reflection I think I’m channelling some kind of celebratory delight that they are finally coming together…and they know it!!
The Heavens will open
First lines first… there has been torrential rainfall in my corner of Scotland this past week. In fact it’s the entire reason this demo exists. As I pondered the rain from my window, the cottage shrouded in the kind of grey mist reminiscent of that scene from The Notebook, I was reminded of Noah and Allie and their iconic love scene, and just like that a song was born. I also just love the expression the heavens opened… it’s definitely how I feel about the effects of a rainy day on my soul.
Until the next love song.
With Love, Clare x