I’m busy packing my bags, we’re going to see Itzhak Perlman playing with and conducting the San Francisco Symphony. This is going to be a short but hopefully useful column. Next week I’ll have a full report of the Perlman concert.
YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT LOVE IS (until you know the meaning of the blues)
One of my favourite songs is the Billie Holiday classic “You Don’t Know What Love Is.” I like the saxophone version by Sonny Rollins a very great deal, and the version where Chet Baker sings it is also superb, but nobody does it better than Holliday. The first two lines: ‘You don’t know what love is, until you know the meaning of the blues.’ are about as true as any lines in any song I know.
About a year ago I got a letter from an old girlfriend, telling me that she had just had her heart broken for the first time. She was pretty stunned, and it was easy to understand why. She isn’t the kind of woman that men generally leave, being beautiful, clever, cool, and fun to be with. She was used to being the heartbreaker. Hell, she’d broken my heart pretty badly when she left me to move to Ireland. When I got the letter and read how the shoe was on the other foot, I smiled, but not for the reasons you might imagine. I think it’s great when people get their hearts broken for the first time. I think it’s necessary to have your heart broken before you can understand what love is all about. I think that’s what the song means; people who’ve never had their hearts broken can fall in and out of love pretty easily.
Before that first big heartbreak, love can seem like kind of a game. Afterwards, you know that love can hurt, and you know how love can hurt. If you let yourself fall in love again, it’s going to be different, because you’ll know the risk you
are taking. Once you understand the risk, it’s not so easy. It’s much harder to let yourself fall, which tends to mean that anyone you can open your heart to must be pretty special to you. It’s also not so easy to just walk away from love, probably because people tend to value things that take risk more than things that come easily.
The worst thing is to be so scared of love that you
either spend the rest of your life hurting people before they can hurt you, or you keep to superficial relationships with people you don’t really care about, so that you won’t get hurt again. I don’t know any of this for sure – it is just my idea about how
love works, but I’m pretty sure there’s some truth in this. It’s a painful lesson, but maybe a necessary one. I think the best thing is: after you heal, and when you are ready to love again, it can be even more wonderful than before. I still think there’s nothing better than love.
Of course, music is one of the all-time great crutches for getting through a broken heart. For most people, it’s easier to find great music than to find cheap sex; and music is probably healthier and more effective than alcohol when it comes to dulling the sharp edges. One of the great things that music can do is show you that you are far from alone. From Miles Davis to Schubert, and from Neil Young to Sarah Vaughn, there are literally hundreds of great musicians who have articulated their pain and loneliness and put it out there on view for everyone to see. Of all of the songs written about heartbreak, I consider You Don’t Know What Love Is to be the very greatest, because it not only shows you that you are not alone, but it can help you to understand that what you are experiencing is an all but unavoidable part of the process of growing into a complete human being.
You don’t know what love is
‘Til you’ve learned the meaning of the blues
Until you’ve loved a love you’ve had to lose
You don’t know what love is
You don’t know how lips hurt
Until you’ve kissed and had to pay the cost
Until you’ve flipped your heart and you have lost
You don’t know what love is
Do you know how lost I’ve been
At the thought of reminiscing
And how lips that taste of tears
Lose their taste for kissing
You don’t know how hearts burn
For love that cannot live yet never dies
Until you’ve faced each dawn with sleepless eyes
You don’t know what love is
You don’t know how hearts burn
For love that cannot live yet never dies
Until you’ve faced each dawn with sleepless eyes
You don’t know what love is
