Jake Cleland

Thursday November 26, 2009 at 15:38

[Flash 9 is required to listen to audio.]

Nancy Adams “Love” (from Disney’s Robin Hood / The Fantastic Mr Fox)

(via nedhepburn)

Two things about this song:

When I was about seven, I saw Robin Hood and was bewitched. I started drawing pretty “foxy ladies” (as my family called them), inspired by Maid Marian. Specifically, this song - and the moment Robin slips a lotus flower/firefly ring on Marian’s finger - seemed to encapsulate everything I didn’t quite understand about grownup romance but desperately wanted to know.

When I was 26, I put this on a mix-CD for a man I thought I was going to marry. From the age of 16, mix-tapes and later mix-CDs became an art I specialised in; they formed a romantic narrative for a romance that, in most cases, hadn’t happened yet. I kept a stack of bridal magazines under my bed (like porn!) and was convinced that what would make me happy would be to find a man who was as romantic as I was; then I thought I had met one. I had no real reason to believe it wouldn’t work out, until we got engaged and then everything started to plummet downhill. I was told not to talk back, not to raise my voice, to do the dishes, not to accidentally throw out anything that could be recycled. A year of deep sadness culminated in being told I “couldn’t” travel to America without him. I traveled to America without him.

Yesterday, thinking of the special effects makeup course I will do next year (in America), I thought of those foxy ladies and how I should see if I can still draw them; maybe they could form the basis of a character prosthetic. Yesterday, listening to iTunes on Shuffle, songs kept popping up that were infused with the regret of having associations with the various mix-CDs I’d made for men who didn’t deserve them, or just weren’t right for them, but either way, men whose DNA was now intertwined with songs I’d arranged in little stories, just for them.

I will draw those foxy ladies again. I will never make another mix-CD for a man.

I used to be a die-hard romantic, but then I met a girl who absolutely crushed me, and I’ve spent the last six months rebuilding myself. I miss being a romantic, but I feel a bit less likely to get hurt this way. Also, I hear you on people being “intertwined with songs”. Obviously I’ve had a similar experience.

You know, seeing as we’re laying our love cards out on the table.

This post was reblogged from Oh My Darlin'.