Who Are They Singing About?

I’m sitting around this kinda warm Saturday afternoon, resting my pulled back muscle (which now is mostly my sciatic nerve), listening to music, trying to beat down the A.D.D. part of me that wants to run around and do a dozen things at one time.

I’ve been listening to the Rock Show on Sirius, and they’ve been playing a lot of great tunes from my youth. Ah, yes. My youth = my choices = my alternate choices. What could turn out to be a melancholy trip through the 70s through the 90s (I don’t consider anything past 2000 as my “youth”), actually turns out to be a voyage into song lyrics.

This time the words that haunt me are lyrics that sing about magical, powerful, beautiful women and whatever they did to have a song written about them. The song that struck me first was Hollywood Nights by Bob Seeger:

She had been born with a face
That would let her get her way
He saw that face and he lost all control
He had lost all control
Night after night
Day after day
It went on and on

What kind of a face could make a man lose his mind for days and nights and nights and days? Or one of my favorites, Rhiannon by Fleetwood Mac:

Rhiannon rings like a bell through the night
Wouldn’t you love to love her?
Takes to the sky like a bird in flight and
Who will be her lover?

All your life you’ve never seen
A woman taken by the wind
Would you stay if she promised you heaven?
Will you ever win?

She is like a cat in the dark and then
She is the darkness
She rules her life like a fine skylark and when
The sky is starless

What kind of woman is thought of as taken by the wind? Does she fly? Do her thoughts lift her higher and higher? What about:  Rhiannon rings  like a bell through the night — clearly an analogy to her solid, musical soul breaking the silence of the night. Pretty powerful.

There are better examples than the ones I’ve given. But you get my drift.  Super women. Gorgeous, powerful, mystical women. Ruling and running their lives just the way they want to.

What would it be like to  born with a face…That would let her get her way? To be so beautiful, talented, genuinely breathtaking that you could have anything you want? You could go to any department store and pick something off the rack and actually wear it. You would barely have to exercise to keep your marvelously thin and voluptuous body. You would have men and women at your feet. Loving you, wanting you. From a distance — right next to you. You’d always have a date for dinner or the movies. The flowers would bend in reverence to your awesomeness.

I myself have always suffered from less-is-really-less syndrome. Unfortunately, I do not suffer from extreme beauty, brains, physique, or mobility. I’ve always been on the average Joe/Joelyn side. But I’ve always wondered what it would be like to be the best — truly best — at anything. From modeling to brain surgeons to ballet. To be sooooo great because everything came naturally to you.

Alas, I will have to leave those wonderings to the mystics. We make the most of who we are and what we have and leave the rest to mystics. Or writers.

But it would be great if they’d write a song about me…

and no…not Fat Bottomed Girls by Queen…