12.18.2007

Music, Death, Love and Grocery Stores


I've thought a little more about Dan Fogelberg's death this week and, although a lot of his work was corny, I always loved a Same Old Lang Syne. The lyrics are here. It's about old lovers that run into each other in the grocery store. They miss each other but realize the flame isn't quite the same.

Met my old lover in the grocery store
The snow was falling Christmas Eve

I stole behind her in the frozen foods

And I touched her on the sleeve

She didn't recognize the face at first

But then her eyes flew open wide

She went to hug me and she spilled her purse

And we laughed until we cried.


Of all the break ups I've had in my life (and Lord knows they are too many to count), I remember listening to those lyrics shortly after high school when my relationship with a (relatively speaking) long term girlfriend ended.

Oddly, for me at least, a similar song came out a few years ago. John Mayer's Comfortable. I remember embracing the song as I entered into yet another soon to be failed, yet important, relationship:

I just remembered that time at the market
you snuck up behind me and jumped on my shopping cart

And rode down . . . aisle five

you looked behind you and smile back at me

crashed into a rack full of magazines

they asked us . . . if we could leave.

Can't remember . . . what went wrong last September

though I'm sure you'd remind me, if you had to
Our love was . . . comfortable and
. . . so broken in.

I'm not sure this has a point other than I just realized that a couple of my important past relationships are tied to songs that involve grocery stores.

I'm never going for food again.