i just put my iPod on shuffle and wrote about whatever song came on. if the paragraphs seem a little abrupt, i'm sorry, but that's when the song ended.

disclaimer: "Dear Prudence" (c) to the Beatles; "Fields Of Gold" (c) to Sting; "Sleep Tight Tiger" (c) to Husky Rescue; "Sadie" (c) to Joanna Newsom; "Romulus" (c) to Sufjan Stevens

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There is only one thing in the world that I honestly want out of a guy. Good looks are a plus, as are intellect and an understanding personality. But what I want, what I really, really want…is for a guy to wake me up in the morning by singing “Dear Prudence” to me. Y’know, that Beatles song? That’s what I want. Only, I want this guy to replace “Prudence” with my name. Isn’t that romantic? It would make me the happiest girl in the world. Of course, I would have to tell him that I wanted him to do this. I mean, come on! What guy would think of precisely this method of awakening by himself? If I happened to find a guy who didn’t need me to tell him this, he just did it of his own free will, I would realize that our entire relationship had actually been a romance novel. I guess I would be okay with that. To only exist in a book can’t be all bad…Especially since I’d have a shockingly romantic boyfriend.

One song that infuriates me to no end is that one by Sting, “Fields Of Gold”. I love it. But I can’t, for the life of me, sing it. Some parts are too high, some are too low. I try to adjust my voice to match the tune, but I end up squawking out some perverted version of the song that has no beauty left in it at all. So all I can do is listen and hold my voice back, for fear that I’ll taint it somehow. Let me tell you, though, one of the hardest things for me to do is to keep from singing a beautiful song that I know the words to.

I’m always on the lookout for songs that I can sing to my baby to make him sleep. Not that I have a baby now, but I’m sure I will someday. A boy. I’ll name him Wolfgang, just for the sake of being able to call him “Wolf”. But anyway, There are the usual lullabies: “Rock-a-bye Baby”, “All The Pretty Little Horses”, the works. But I want my child to be special, to have a past that he can tell stories about when he gets older. And in order for that to happen, I’d have to start at the very beginning: interesting lullabies. One that I’ve found particularly calming and sweet is a little tune called “Sleep Tight Tiger” by a band that’s all but unheard of, so it won’t make any difference if I say their name. But this song, it’s so calming, it could put me to sleep. It’s just got that…thing about it. It works.

So tell me, is this “Sadie” a dog or a person being personified and described as a dog in the song? I don’t know, and come to think of it, I guess I don’t really care. I just like to sing it. Unlike “Fields Of Gold”, this song seems to be tailored to fit my own voice, even though, of course, it wasn’t. It seems like such a fun song, with little plucks of the harp strings that sound like raindrops falling in a puddle, but what it comes down to is that this song is really quite sad. Not because of the words or the tune, but the way the girl, Joanna Newsom, sings it. It starts out with an energetic cry of “Saaaaaadieeeee!” and things about burying bones and pinecones. Very cute, right? But then you listen more and more to her voice, and you begin to hear it. That soft sadness that goes hand-in-hand with a furrowed brow and an unhappy smile. “Dig up your bones, exhume your pinecones, Sadie.” Make that poor girl happy again.

I never knew I was missing something inside, but after listening to this song, it seems so obvious. How could I not have felt it? It’s an empty space that gnaws at my heart whenever I hear those first few notes of “Romulus”. And what makes it hurt even more is that I know that space wasn’t always empty. When I was younger, it was filled to the brim, and I was happy. There was nothing missing in my life. Everything was new. Everything was good. And then I got older, and I never even realized that that something was gone….until now. I feel so cheated. It was my something! My happiness! And yet it was stolen away without so much as a whisper of an explanation. No apology either, and that made me sore, you can bet. But this song, it has nothing to do with the lyrics (which is not to say that they aren’t good lyrics; they’re fantastic!), it has something hidden in those notes, and when I think about it, I think that it could possibly be my something. Things were easier when I had it. People reading this might think, “Well, obviously, it was your childhood innocence!” or something like that. But I don’t think that’s it. I think that this was actually something that really and truly should have belonged to me for my entire life. It was sort of like something to look at when I was feeling down, sort of a “Hey! Just think, without this, you’d be a lot worse off!”…But now that it’s gone, maybe I am a lot worse off. What if, without it, I’m a worse person than I could have been? I’m crying now, as I write this, and it’s because, unlike a lost necklace or love letter, my something can never be recovered. I may find something like it during the course of my life, but I can never have the original. But, God, do I miss it.