Late Night Grand Hotel

And maybe you were thinkin'
That you thought you knew me well
But, no one ever knows the heart of anyone else
I feel like Garbo in this late night grand hotel
Cause living alone is all I've ever done well

~ "Late Night Grand Hotel" - Nanci Griffith

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I'm not sure I should listen to some music when I'm tired like this.  It makes me want things the universe seems to have decided are not for me.  Take right now, for instance.  "Love at the Five and Dime" is spinning.  It is one of the loveliest songs I know, so sweet and hopeful that it makes everything in my heart that longs to be loved sigh.  It is a perfect song.  I will sing with it.  I won't be able to help myself.  Nobody can, I think.  

This whole playlist is sort of a minefield.  I like all the artists I have in it, but I rarely play it, and now I remember why.  There are songs that make me want to slap all the men I know ("Pretend Love") just for being the same gender as the singer.  There are songs that make me all teary-eyed and girl ("Home Within Your Heart," "Love at the Five and Dime").  And then there are the songs I want for myself.

I want somebody to sing them to me, for me, callused hands sure and supple on a Martin.  I want them to be personal promises, not just an indifferent playlist randomly generated by my having dumped artists I like together and pressed "play."  I want them tailored to me and him.  I want "Long Shadows" and "You Move Me."  I want "Mama, You've Been on My Mind" and "I'm the Man Who Loves You."  I covet them.  I crave them like a delicacy, like a basic sustenance long denied.  

The truth of it is, though, for whatever reason I seems I became hard to love somewhere along the way.  It wasn't on purpose, I assure you.  Because of it, though, I don't get these songs except when they spin through iTunes.  I have no troubadours anymore, not for a long time now, no beautiful guitar guys, no singers of songs.  Instead, my life is much more like "Late Night Grand Hotel."  

And maybe that's appropriate, too.  Maybe that's just the other side of the coin.  Maybe you can't want one without having personal experience of the other.  It's just that I am so tired of being good at the living alone part.  I would very much like to have some of the other for awhile, even if it turns out that perhaps I am not very good at it.