first loves: song

i almost completely forgot about my little project of counting down my first loves. i already did poetry way back on October 2007. yes, i’ve sadly neglected this. 😦 i’ll try to do one every two weeks till i finish my list. 🙂

next on my list is the first song i fell-in-love with. as with my poetry choice, i’m sure i’ve heard quite a few songs before hearing this song, but this is the first song i really really loved.

i first heard this song in my grandfather’s Les Miserables cd which i listened to over and over again. this was way, way before Joey Potter (played by Katie Holmes) sang ruined it on Dawson’s Creek. (joey chose pacey over dawson so i forgave her for this.) 😛 i remember this being the cd i’d play before going to sleep.

when i was younger, i loved Eponine’s character because of the songs she got to sing… On My Own, A Little Fall of Rain and her interjections in the Love Montage (I Saw Him Once/A Heart Full of Love). her character is just so tragic. imagine being in-love with your guy bestfriend and having to watch him fall-in-love with a girl you introduced him to. *ouch!* right? how was i supposed to know that this would become my anthem when i finally fell-in-love? :)) this song took a whole new meaning when i was finally able to empathize as a girl in-love with a guy who could only saw her as a friend.

this is the song my friends associate with me the most. i even did a report on blaise pascal in the tune of this song. i think it went something like… blaise pascal was a mathematician and so on and so forth. i hope you get the idea because i don’t remember it anymore. :))

anyway, i love this song and i’ll love this song even if i finally get to taste requited love. 😉

On My Own

And now I’m all alone again
Nowhere to turn, no one to go to.
Without a home, without a friend
without a face to say hello to
But now the night is near
And I can make-believe he’s here

Sometimes I walk alone at night
When everybody else is sleeping
I think of him and then I’m happy
With the company I’m keeping
The city goes to bed
And I can live inside my head

On my own
Pretending he’s beside me
All alone
I walk with him ’til morning
Without him, I feel his arms around me
And when I lose my way, I close my eyes and he has found me

In the rain
The pavement shines like silver
All the lights are misty in the river
In the darkness, the trees are full of starlight
And all I see is him and me forever and forever

And I know it’s only in my mind
That I’m talking to myself and not to him
And although I know that he is blind
Still I say there’s a way for us

I love him
But when the night is over
He is gone
The river’s just a river
Without him, the world around me changes
The trees are bare and everywhere the streets are full of strangers

I love him
But every day I’m lonely
All my life I’ve only been pretending
Without me, his world will go on turning
The world is full of happiness that I have never known

I love him
I love him
I love him…
But only on my own…

first loves: poetry

i recently bought this book, first loves, where poets discuss the poems that made them fall in love with the written word. and that got me thinking. what exactly was the first poem that made me start loving poetry so much?

i’ve been having an affair with books and music for as long as i can remember. my parents instilled in me and my sister the love for books and music early on. my memories as a child were always of reading one book or another, practicing piano, watching classic movies and such. family computer games or sports were really never part of my childhood. my father even discouraged games which didn’t stimuate our brains one way or the other. the first novel i read was Anne of Green Gables. my favorite album was that of the broadway play Les Miserables, which i would play over and over again. i remember watching Romeo and Juliet, the one starring Leonard Whiting and Olivia Hussey, and telling my uncle that they did the graveyard scene all wrong. he told me to prove it and i did so he bought me pizza. hahaha. needless to say i was a weird child.

looking back, i can’t seem to pinpoint what the first poem was that made me fall in love with poetry. i remember loving some of Shakespeare’s sonnets and Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s Sonnets from the Portuguese. but somehow loving these poems were a given. the first time i read a poem that gave me chills was actually in a Sweet Valley University book. in the story, i think Elizabeth, who had just broken up with her then-boyfriend Todd, was attending a poetry reading where she read this poem by Lord Byron. (sorry if i’m getting the facts wrong. kasi naman ang tagal na nito plus i don’t have the SVU books anymore.) mind you, when i read this i’ve never really been in-love yet. love for me was still very much a mysterious emotion. and yet, when i read this poem i empathized with it immediately. from words on a page it went straight to my heart. it didn’t even take any effort for me to memorize it.

reading it again now, i relate to it differently. because now, i’ve actually felt the feeling of loss that the poem portrays. and that makes me love it all the more.

When We Two Parted
George Gordon, Lord Byron

When we two parted
In silence and tears,
Half broken-hearted
To sever for years,
Pale grew thy cheek and cold,
Colder thy kiss;
Truly that hour foretold
Sorrow to this.

The dew of the morning
Sunk chill on my brow–
It felt like the warning
Of what I feel now.
Thy vows are all broken,
And light is thy fame;
I hear thy name spoken,
And share in its shame.

They name thee before me,
A knell to mine ear;
A shrudder comes o’er me–
Why wert thou so dear?
They know not I knew thee,
Who knew thee so well–
Long, long I shall rue thee,
Too deeply to tell.

In secret we met–
In silence I grieve,
That thy heart could forget,
Thy spirit deceive
If I should meet thee
After long years,
How should I greet thee?–
With silence and tears.