to hear you breathe by my side

all you want ~ dido

"oh, if you'd come home ,
i'll let you know that all you want,
is right here in this room.
all you want,
and all you need,
is sitting here with you .
all you want."

this song just came on randomly, and i had yet another of those moments where i am reminded of an artist that i love, but often forget about. dido has one of those voices that sneaks up on you, sticks under the skin, and lingers for days. her songs, often disguised as love songs, are typically deeper than that. lyrically, the more you listen, and the deeper you dig, there are undercurrents of bitterness, betrayal, lost hope, regret, and loss. yet, interspersed - or perhaps the connection between it all - is love. loving regardless, loving despite disappointment, loving even though you have had to let go, and loving in some kind of realm of obsession.

suppose much of it is a glimpse into the darker shadows of our hearts. something that is often deeply relatable, even if we are tempted to shade our eyes from that level of self-examination. i've been trudging around in that kind of muck lately, though, as part of my so-called self-analysis (i.e. trying to sort out what has me so blue). some of what i'm finding reveals an often imbalanced expectation for hope and happiness, and the realization of the day-to-day, and of my own mistakes and mis-steps in love. as a child, i tended to expect the worst, to look at things with disappointed eyes. i know that has a lot to do with the life i led, with my examples of love, with the way i perceived things to be.

and yet, somehow i found myself in my thirties with this almost childish optimism. somehow hope found its meandering way to my door, at the least opportune time, when i really should be basking in the dark shadows of bitterness and disappointment. instead i found myself driven to realizing some ideal of bliss that i had constructed in my head. something to aspire to, as we all should try for the most happy we can wrap our arms around, but at the same time it has limited my enjoyment of right here, right now. it is all still cloudy, and full of mud, as i work my way through it, but something in it brings to light (so to speak) that we need to learn to play about in the shadows, in order to find what we have, what we want, and the precarious bridge that sways in-between.

and somehow this song illustrates a little part of that, or if nothing else, has set me out on a train-of-thought ramble. typical me, finding something in each and every lyrical refrain.