A Song a Week, Starting Riiiiiight ... Now (Week 1--The Rest of Forever)

Like all my best ideas, this one is stolen ... from a movie (sorry, Joe). This time the film was "Julie and Julia." (http://www.sonypictures.com/homevideo/julieandjulia/) If Netflix hasn't mailed it to you yet, it's a great film about an aspiring chef/blogger (Julie) trying to walk in the shoes of her heroine Julia Childs by cooking her way through 500+ recipes from Ms. Childs cookbook in a year. Along the way, Julie learns a lot about cooking, but much more about herself. A couple of weeks after seeing the movie I started wondering, what might I learn about songwriting and myself if I did something comparable? Well, we're gonna find out, starting this week. Except the food for thought on this blog will be music; specifically, songs that I have written and performed (or at least recorded) myself. I will post a song a week from past, present and future songwriting efforts, and try to explain to you and me why I wrote what I wrote and what, if anything, I hoped to achieve in the effort. And come next spring, well, who knows? Let's decide that next spring ...

I guess I could begin at the beginning, with the first song I ever wrote and recorded, but that seems too predictable. Instead, I choose to start with the last thing I wrote, a song called "The Rest of Forever." You can listen to it on myspace now at this link:

http://www.myspace.com/stevecelestinimusic

Of course, you can do what you like, nobody's watching ... but might I suggest you give the song one listen before reading on? This whole exercise will, I predict, be more interesting if you read MY thoughts only after thinking about YOUR initial thoughts on song meaning, motivation, etc. Go ahead, give it a spin. I'll wait right here ...

Welcome back. So what's going on here? Well two not quite parallel events drove this one. First, my wife of five months today has been battling a couple of chronic maladies. Nothing life threatening or dire (please don't call her if you know her), but there was a morning several weeks back sitting on an airplane flying to a business meeting on a way too early flight after way too many beers the prior night when I didn't know that yet. So I wallowed. I let myself imagine the worst. And it sucked. Luckily, I was in an aisle by myself and there was no beverage service so nobody else had to witness my quasi-breakdown. The second event happened earlier: the death of my grandmother in late '08. The two events came together in my consciousness such that while I (irrationally) muddled over disaster scenarios for me and my beloved, washing myself with self-pity, the image of my grandfather, my beautiful, 97 year old grandfather, mourning the loss of his wife of 71 years crept in and drove the emotional pain wedge home with devastating precision. I'm really proud of how well I composed myself by the time the plane landed and the fact that I didn't further embarrass myself, or my company, at my meeting that day.

Back to the song's composition. If you've ever been married, you know that on the days leading up to a marriage ceremony, on the day of, and many times thereafter, the word "forever" gets tossed around a lot. What does forever mean to a relationship? Is it something more than "till death do us part?" I like to think so, so ... hopefully ... when you listen to this song, you'll hear not only the sadness and poignance of the earthly story, but also the vision of a future worth dying for. That's what I think I was shooting for, anyway. Am I on target? We all get to decide for ourselves. That's one of the things I love best about music.

Talk to you next week. Thanks for reading and please feel free to share this blog with friends.

Steve

The Rest of Forever

Written by: Steve Celestini

Lady I see you Turning your face to the moon that betrays you And led me to this place To show us the rest of our lives Honey I want you Not for the moment but now and forever Till time and all memory take back the ring you now wear Cuz the rest of forever starts here Beauty walk towards me now This aisle leads you down A primrose pathway of faith And I won't forget the vows We promised to keep somehow No matter what bitterness waits Wife I adore you And I always will so I humbly implore you To tell me you still want me Just like the day we first kissed Woman I hear you I'll try to be better at listening to you With more than my ears please don't cry now, it tears me apart Can we just let forever restart Darling don't leave me don't Your suffering grieves me so My every breath labors inside I can't sleep without you dear But last night I woke in fear Sure that this morning you died When I didn't wake up I just cried Where's God when I need him this time Please Lord give us just one more night ... Angel I miss you But soon I'll be with you and never will leave you Once we rendezvous at the moon that first lit up our hearts And the rest of forever will start