Beautifully poignant and moving songs.

Post by **JewelSong** » Sun Jun 16, 2013 10:02 pm

There didn't seem to be a thread for sharing favorite songs...so I started one. Every once in a while, I hear a song that moves me to tears. It's not always a sad song, but there is something poignant and wonderful about the tune or the lyrics or the subject matter.

This song by Mary Chapin Carpenter is one of them. It's called Mrs. Hemingway and I am including the description and words along with a youtube link.

I think it may be the kind of song that only people "of a certain age" might connect with. Life...you live, you learn, you go on. Because what else can you do, really?

Stunningly beautiful song.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I5WqpNlrz7o

This song is about Hadley Richardson Hemingway, who was married to American author Ernest Hemingway between 1921 and 1927. She was the first of his four wives. Carpenter explained the inspiration for the song to Express Night Out (a publication of the Washington Post):

"This song was something I've been wanting to write, or investigate, since I was in college. That's when I first read [the Ernest Hemingway memoir] A Moveable Feast.......what got my attention was that his first wife, Hadley, was sort of a shadowy figure in literary history and his life. I was always fascinated by her.

People are aware of the story that he fell in love with her best friend and left [her]. This is a song about her life in Paris with him, before all of that happened. In A Moveable Feast he looks back to his life in Paris with Hadley, before the fame, the money, and the corruption if you will, and he always seemed to indicate that that's when he did his best work. " With regard to Hadley, he says in those memoirs, "I wish I had died before I ever loved anyone but her."

Hemingway dedicated his first novel The Sun Also Rises to Hadley and to their son, John Hadley Nicanor Hemingway. It was, he said, the least he could do. All royalties from this book also went to Hadley. Hemingway was, it was said, devastated that he was losing a woman he had loved and still loved.

LYRICS

We packed up our books and our dishes
Our dreams and your worsted wool suits
We sailed on the 8th of December.
Farewell old Hudson River
Here comes the sea
And love was as new and as bright and as true
When I loved you and you loved me.

Two steamer trunks in the carriage
Safe arrival we cabled back home
It was just a few days before Christmas
We filled our stockings with wishes
And walked for hours
Arm in arm through the rain, to the glassed-in café
It held us like hothouse flowers

Living in Paris, in attics and garrets
Where the coal merchants climb every stair
The dance hall next door is filled with sailors and whores
And the music floats up through the air
There's Sancerre and oysters, cathedrals and cloisters
And time with it's unerring aim
For now we can say we were lucky most days
And throw a rose into the Seine

Love is the greatest deceiver
It hollows you out like a drum
And suddenly nothing is certain
As if all the clouds closed the curtains and blocked the sun
And friends now are strangers in this city of dangers
As cold and as cruel as they come

Sometimes I look at old pictures
And smile at how happy we were
How easy it was to be hungry.
It wasn't for fame or for money
It was for love
Now my copper hair's gray as the stones on the quay
In the city where magic was

Living in Paris, in attics and garrets
Where the coal merchants climb every stair
The dance hall next door is filled with sailors and whores
And the music floats up through the air
There's Sancerre and oysters and Notre Dame cloisters
And time with it's unerring aim

For now we can say we were lucky most days
And throw a rose into the Seine
Now I can say I was lucky most days
And throw a rose into the Seine

Post by **Elentári** » Wed Jun 19, 2013 8:51 am

A friend once told me about this incredibly sad song by Harry Chapin, one of the greatest singer-songwriters of the past 40 years. It's about a man who stopped sharing his music after his debut concert because he'd been judged and found guilty of not being good enough by critical reviews. Any of us for whom music is an incredibly important part of our lives, will appreciate the poignancy of this song...

Harry Chapin - Mr Tanner

Post by **Alatar** » Wed Jun 19, 2013 9:33 am

That's beautiful Elen. I had a "Greatest Hits" of Harry Chapin once, but I'm sure that wasn't on it.

ETA: It reminded me of this TV Ad aired during the troubles in 1992
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIX_YGtgpbQ

Post by **JewelSong** » Wed Jun 19, 2013 11:02 am

The first time I heard "Mr Tanner" it was at a live concert by Harry Chapin. I was moved to tears...wonderfully song. I think he wrote it after reading an actual concert review.

Post by **Elentári** » Wed Jun 19, 2013 2:43 pm

JewelSong wrote:The first time I heard "Mr Tanner" it was at a live concert by Harry Chapin. I was moved to tears...wonderfully song. I think he wrote it after reading an actual concert review.

That's right, Jewel - the video I linked to has a clip from an interview with Harry's wife, talking about how he read and kept the newspaper article in order to write the song...

Alatar wrote:That's beautiful Elen. I had a "Greatest Hits" of Harry Chapin once, but I'm sure that wasn't on it.

ETA: It reminded me of this TV Ad aired during the troubles in 1992
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIX_YGtgpbQ

Wow...that's an inspired use of a song to get a powerful message across.

Post by **JewelSong** » Wed Jun 19, 2013 10:57 pm

Harry Chapin was such a gifted and giving artist. He lived in Huntington, NY on Long Island - where I grew up. His death in a car accident was such a tragedy and so preventable He was a horrible driver and could easily have afforded a driver.

I believe Mary Chapin Carpenter (who wrote and performed the song I posted first - did anyone listen to it? You MUST!) is equally gifted and versatile. No relation to Harry, though.

Harry's brother, Tom Chapin, is a noted children's singer-songwriter.

Post by **Alatar** » Wed Jun 19, 2013 11:53 pm

I listened to it Jewel, but it didn't really move me. I thought it was a nice tune, but nothing more.

Post by **JewelSong** » Thu Jun 20, 2013 12:03 am

Maybe you have to be older to have it hit home.

"Time with it's unerring aim..."

Post by **River** » Thu Jun 20, 2013 12:50 am

Alatar wrote: ETA: It reminded me of this TV Ad aired during the troubles in 1992
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vIX_YGtgpbQ

Oof.

Post by **WampusCat** » Thu Jun 20, 2013 5:53 am

This one gets me every time. By Stan Rogers...

Harris and the Mare

Post by **Elentári** » Thu Jun 20, 2013 9:23 am

That's a curious song, Wampus... certainly a heavy, emotional tale is being told, but you only get a snapshot of a moment in time, and it leaves you wondering what the background to the incident was, for the characters to arrive at this situation...why the townsfolk didn't lift a hand, etc... kinda unsatisfying for me in that respect!

Jewel, that's a beautiful, poetic song...I guess you have to have been there to really feel it... (and I don't mean Paris!)

Post by **JewelSong** » Thu Jun 20, 2013 12:56 pm

Stan Rogers's brother Garnet Rogers did another song about a horse called "Small Victory" that used to get me all teared up....I'll try to find it.

Post by **WampusCat** » Thu Jun 20, 2013 8:32 pm

Elen, I like the open-ended aspect of the song, which lets my imagination fill in the rest. To me it speaks of the all-too-human tendency to look the other way, and the effect that has on those who are in dire, even life-threatening circumstances.

And it brings up all sorts of thoughts about the use of violence. Here was a pacifist, unwilling to fight a war he considered pointless, who felt impelled to act violently then felt betrayed by those who failed to come to his aid. An odd, compelling tangle of emotions, compulsions and honor.

Post by **Lalaith** » Sat Jun 22, 2013 2:47 am

I haven't had a chance to listen to any of these yet.

I will say that Allegri's Miserere moves me to tears every time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=36Y_ztEW1NE

For a more contemporary sad song, I think Sufjan Stevens John Wayne Gacy, Jr. is terribly sad. The lines:

They were boys with their cars, summer jobs
Oh my God

and then...

And in my best behavior
I am really just like him
Look beneath the floorboards
For the secrets I have hid

That's just chilling.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=otx49Ko3fxw

(I've never watched the video. I'm not sure I will now. And thanks, yovi! <shakes fist>

)

Oh, and then this song by Sufjan is also very poignant:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EzeW5KoPUI

Casimir Pulaski Day

And he takes, and he takes, and he takes....