when you love, the music around you becomes the soundtrack… when a music lover loves…

the way a song makes you feel about them

when you love,
the music around you becomes
the soundtrack to the stories you are living
with that person in them

that time, those places, those moments,
it intertwines with all of it.
it becomes the energy that captures what you
feel with them, what you feel for them.
it becomes this visceral, engraved part of the life you live,
the life you know… a life that has them in it.

so, when it ends…
when you have to start unweaving
them from your stories, and untangling them
from your energy, and unraveling. them. from. your. life.

out of everything you have to let go of…

i don’t know if there’s
anything harder to let go of
than the way a song makes you
feel about them.

– when a music lover loves

– butterflies rising

Ways To Break This Southern Girl’s Heart
after Diane Lato’s “Easy Ways To Break My Heart”

– give her unsweetened tea. there are no two more terrible words to a southern girl when put together

– tell her you’re an alabama fan. you’ve gotta know that she’s gonna bleed volunteer orange ‘til the end no matter

– tell her you don’t like the mountains. her heart has east tennessee sunrises imprinted on it… and she wants to show you every sunlit, treelined, starkissed view

– turn down the volume when ‘country girl’ by ray lamontagne comes on. papa used to play it for her on the porch, and she’s gotta hear every bit of it, every time

– you wanna really crush her heart? then ask to meet her daddy. because he isn’t in her heart anymore. he was the first one who broke it, and in too many ways, long ago

– and if you wanna just completely shatter her into pieces… then try to give her an ordinary love. because she needs love like wildfire. like forever-fire. until every last southern sun sets. till the stars burn out. and to know her heart is finally safe… with you

…she needs to know that breaking her heart is the very last thing you would ever want to do.

– butterflies rising

…some songs are just barely becoming safe again,
and some songs maybe never will be.

and i think that’s just how powerful music can be.
it’s such an aesthetic in our existence. we feel so much
from it, and because of it, and through it… and
so it can break us completely open in heartbreak,
but i wouldn’t trade that for how much it makes us feel
alive and free and infinite, and in love, in all of
the beautiful moments.

– butterflies rising