{"id":46119,"date":"2012-09-02T09:50:27","date_gmt":"2012-09-02T17:50:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=46119"},"modified":"2012-09-02T18:10:33","modified_gmt":"2012-09-03T02:10:33","slug":"its-such-a-dirty-old-shame","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=46119","title":{"rendered":"It&#8217;s A Dirty Old Shame When All You Get From Love Is A Blog Post"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/All_You_Get_from_Love_Is_a_Love_Song\">From Wikipedia<\/a>: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p>&#8220;All You Get from Love Is a Love Song&#8221; is a song composed by Steve Eaton. It was popularized by the Carpenters in 1977. It was released to the public on May 2, 1977. Its B-side was &#8220;I Have You&#8221;, a song released on the A Kind of Hush album in 1976. The song was also included on their 1977 album, Passage.<br \/>\nIn the late seventies, this particular track appeared in a Top 10 of misheard lyrics (and is often on similar forums online).[citation needed] This was complied by Noel Edmonds and the misheard lyric sounds like: &#8220;Because the best love songs are written with a broken arm,&#8221; as opposed to the correct lyrics &#8220;Because the best love songs are written with a broken heart.&#8221; <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><iframe width=\"420\" height=\"315\" src=\"http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/bw_1iUh72hY\" frameborder=\"0\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>Lyrics: <\/p>\n<blockquote><p><A HREF=\"http:\/\/www.lyricsfreak.com\/c\/carpenters\/all+you+get+from+love+is+a+love+song_20027554.html\">Like sailin&#8217; on a sailin&#8217; ship to nowhere<\/a><br \/>\nLove took over my heart like an ocean breeze<br \/>\nAs seagulls fly I knew that I was losin&#8217;<br \/>\nLove was washed away with the driftin&#8217; tide<br \/>\nOh it&#8217;s a dirty old shame<br \/>\nWhen all you get from love is a love song<br \/>\nThat&#8217;s got you layin&#8217; up nights<br \/>\nJust waitin&#8217; for the music to start<br \/>\nIt&#8217;s such a dirty old shame<br \/>\nWhen you got to take the blame for a love song<br \/>\nBecause the best love songs are written<br \/>\nWith a broken heart<br \/>\nAnd now the tears in my eyes are ever blinding<br \/>\nThe future that lies before me I cannot see<br \/>\nAlthough tomorrow I know the sun is rising<br \/>\nLighting up the world for everyone, but not for me <\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>I like <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/The_Carpenters\">The Carpenters<\/a>, but I really love this particular song.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;ve been on a Carpenters kick for the past week, watching documentaries and movies about them on Youtube, and listening to many of their songs I never remember hearing before, such as this one.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s poignant watching videos of Karen, knowing that a few years later, she was dead from anorexia nervosa. <\/p>\n<p>Her songs &#8212; yes, I know they were written by others, but they seem to come straight out of her life and out of her heart. They feel autobiographical. <\/p>\n<p>I know that Karen was never able to sustain a relationship for long.<\/p>\n<p>This song gets me from the first line: &#8220;Like sailin&#8217; on a sailin&#8217; ship to nowhere&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>I want my life to go forward. I want it to be linear, but I keep feeling like I&#8217;m repeating the same mistakes, the same failed relationships. They never last much longer than a year.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s a dirty old shame when all you get from love is a blog post. <\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s such a dirty old shame when you got to take the blame for a love song.<\/p>\n<p>I can&#8217;t blame my failed relationships on my demanding touring schedule or on the travails of being rich and famous. I can&#8217;t identify that deeply with Karen Carpenter. But the more I read about her, the more I watch about her, the more keenly I identify. <\/p>\n<p>When I <A HREF=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=45539\">speak to an audience<\/a>, I feel like Karen Carpenter singing. I feel we both display that same <A HREF+https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=45531\">open-heart<\/a> in performance. <\/p>\n<p>Among the most self-destructive things you can do is to write about your love life. It makes people pause before considering a relationship with you. Nobody wants to have their love life written up from another&#8217;s perspective. <\/p>\n<p>I guess I learned from my dad that you sacrifice everything to be your best from behind the pulpit. My dad has a PhD in Rhetoric and it shows when he gives a speech. He&#8217;s magnificent. <\/p>\n<p>To prepare for a talk, you study, you write, you rehearse, and then you assemble your best self and give it to the public. <\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s rare to find a great public speaker who&#8217;s equally warm one-on-one. Many are at their most human in front of a crowd. <\/p>\n<p>Karen put all of her love into her singing and she didn&#8217;t have much left for real life.<\/p>\n<p>My frustrations with ordinary human connection drive my blogging. <\/p>\n<p>This Carpenters song was released May 2, 1977, the month that I moved to California from Australia. I was eleven years old and determined to build a new life free from frustrations and failures of my first three years in school (2nd &#8211; 5th grade), the same length of time that I was interested in girls (but had no success).<\/p>\n<p>I remember the one time I moved in with a woman. It lasted from August to November 1993. I got a call from an Orthodox rabbi at the time. I told him what I was doing. He said, &#8220;You&#8217;re going about things the wrong way.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>Orthodox rabbis kept telling me this same thing over the past 20 years and judging by the results of my choices, I guess they&#8217;re right.<\/p>\n<p>I feel like I&#8217;ve missed out on much of life by grasping for things in the wrong order and I&#8217;ve ended up with nothing from love but blog posts (and some fancy duds). <\/p>\n<p><A HREF=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=46047\">I love the open road<\/a>. It&#8217;s like sailin&#8217; on a sailin&#8217; ship to nowhere, like my relationships. Love took over my heart like an ocean breeze and left just as easily. <\/p>\n<p>There was that Sunday morning one November. I woke her at 4 a.m.. She protested. &#8220;You&#8217;ve got to be kidding!&#8221; I didn&#8217;t listen. I picked her up and put her in the shower. &#8220;You can sleep in the car,&#8221; I said.<\/p>\n<p>I had a rental car for a week because of an obligation (I had crashed a friend&#8217;s car and while it was in the shop, I drove him around). It had to be returned the next day. I wanted to see how far we could drive. I had dreams of reaching <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Big_Sur\">Big Sur<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>We were in <A HREF=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Morro_Bay,_California\">Moro Bay<\/a> by 9 a.m.. She wanted to stop and walk around. We had breakfast. We poked around. By 10 a.m., I was eager to hit the road. She thought three hours of driving was far enough knowing we had to go back the same day.<\/p>\n<p>We asked a guy how far away was Big Sur. &#8220;About an hour,&#8221; he said.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;That&#8217;s too far,&#8221; said my girlfriend.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But how far away does Big Sur actually start? You mean the town is an hour away. But Big Sur starts in 20 minutes drive.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>He agreed. And my girlfriend reluctantly acquiesced to my wishes.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;If we&#8217;re going to argue like this, we can&#8217;t go on vacations together,&#8221; she said. <\/p>\n<p>We stopped on a bluff in Big Sur and carrying a blanket, walked to a secluded spot overlooking the ocean where no one could see us. We took off our clothes and got friendly. The cliff face was just a few feet from where we grappled, falling away 200 yards to the surf below. <\/p>\n<p>The sun shone. The sky was blue. The temperature was about 75 degrees. It was perfect. <\/p>\n<p>We made it to Monterey by 4 p.m. and had an hour to walk around before the sun set. My girlfriend had never been to Monterrey. I felt great that I was taking her to places she&#8217;d never been before and making her scream my name. <\/p>\n<p>When we got out of the car, she started making suggestions but I said no. We had to find a coffee shop before anything. I needed a bathroom.<\/p>\n<p>She was surprised at how assertive I was. She liked that. Normally I was passive and supportive and she walked all over me. <\/p>\n<p>Beginning the drive home, I put the Cowboys game on the radio. She felt the loss of my attention. Turning to her phone, she read me a text that she&#8217;d gotten from Vicki*, a woman she&#8217;d twice left me for. <\/p>\n<p>The text said simply, &#8220;Do you want to play?&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The first time my girl left me for this other girl was after we&#8217;d gone out for a week in January and had plans to get together that Monday night when she went off the radar and did not pop up for six days to leave me a message that she&#8217;d gotten back together with someone.<\/p>\n<p>The second time was in July when she went on a vacation and called me to ask how did I feel about her playing around with Vicki* on her last night in LA.<\/p>\n<p>I was speechless, got off the phone quickly, and cut her out of my life two months.<\/p>\n<p>Now Vicki was popping up again. Driving meant freedom to me, but now I was stuck in a car for at least four hours with somebody taunting me about her lesbian hook-ups. <\/p>\n<p>She&#8217;d said that her previous boyfriend would never put up with such behavior but obviously I did. I was a doormat.<\/p>\n<p>I went into shock as I drove the car at about 70 mph along the narrow, twisted and bumpy 101 Freeway South. I needed all of my attention to keep us safe but I felt like I had just been punched in the gut.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;Well, do you?&#8221; I kept asking her. <\/p>\n<p>She said no. She apologized for bringing it up. &#8220;I just wanted your attention,&#8221; she said. <\/p>\n<p>When we stopped for gas, my girlfriend paid for the second time that day. She knew the desperation of my finances. <\/p>\n<p>At the end of the trip, I announced how great it had been. My girl said that she now knew how much I needed reining in. Upon reflection, she should&#8217;ve stopped me in Moro Bay. I had no common sense. We&#8217;d taken a bridge too far. <\/p>\n<p>&#8220;But we didn&#8217;t make love in the sun until we got to Big Sur,&#8221; I thought. &#8220;How could you regret that?&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>From Wikipedia: &#8220;All You Get from Love Is a Love Song&#8221; is a song composed by Steve Eaton. It was popularized by the Carpenters in 1977. It was released to the public on May 2, 1977. Its B-side was &#8220;I &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/?p=46119\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-46119","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music","category-personal"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46119","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=46119"}],"version-history":[{"count":17,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46119\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":46197,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46119\/revisions\/46197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=46119"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=46119"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lukeford.net\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=46119"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}