Today is like a Monday. The end of a bank holiday, the start of the workweek, with all its to-do lists and places to be. I started this Monday-not-Monday way before the sun. I hadn’t meant to get up so early, but sometimes it happens that way. I worked out in the garage by the overhead light and my phone app, the sun still slumbering away. It was a tough workout, but it felt good to push myself. At one point the trainer said “you can do anything for one minute” and it felt inspiring. It felt like no matter what I had to face today, I could do it. Later, towards the end of the workout, he said to exhale the things holding you back. I almost started crying right then. Sweat therapy, this feels like.
And I needed it. The strength, the exhaling and letting things go, the knowledge that I can do anything for one minute – I needed it all more than I thought. Getting into my car I was faced with issues with my battery, issues that I have to address today, issues that kept me here, working from home. At least that’s an option. But, car repairs are stressful, especially since money is very tight right now. Then sitting down to “work from home” I got hit with a bill that had to be paid asap. Stress. Stress. More Stress.
Keep breathing. You can do anything for one minute. Breathe. Let what you can go. Face it.
So, I’m breathing. I’m listening to Lana Del Rey’s new album which I love. And while “Mariners Apartment Complex” plays I got some good news. Good things amidst all the stress. It happens like that if you are open to it. If you pay attention. If you let the good in, as well as the stressful and “bad”.
I hit play again, to hear “Mariners Apartment Complex” again. Today’s Song of the Day.
“Mariners Apartment Complex” by Lana Del Rey
from the album, Norman Fucking Rockwell (2019)
Song of the Day
Women In Music September
“You lose your way,
just take my hand.
You’re lost at sea,
then I’ll command your boat to me again.
Don’t look too far,
right where you are,
that’s where I am.
I’m your man.”
Once upon a music obsessive time, I discovered “Video Games” by Lana Del Rey. The song was the talk of the music blogs at the time, and after a first listen I was hooked. I fell in love with Lana’s sleepy, sensual, post-blues voice, and the stories she sang in her songs.
The first time I heard “Mariners Apartment Complex” when it was released as a pre-album single, I connected immediately. As quickly as “Video Games” once did. Maybe in a bigger way. The song fit exactly to where I was a the time, and how I felt. It still does.
I love the story in this song. A woman who is stronger than she’s taken for, who loves enormously, who believes in possibility and in people, in change, and in saving each other with that enormous love. I like the gender swap in the lyrics with “I’m your man”, and how it relays something that has nothing to do with gender, at least to me. I take it to mean more about strength, and about being there for the person you love. The kind of strength that only love can provide.
I relate to that kind of strength, love, and hope. I feel it in the love I have in my life, how it has made me both strong and vulnerable, and how the latter, that vulnerability is not a weakness, even if it feels like it at times. This love we have has made me happier and sadder than I’ve been for a long, long time.
Life does that though – brings the happy and sad, and love between two people who are open and real does, too. And yes, at times I’ve felt so scared and insecure, but even in those moments, I try to never stop believing in who we are, and what we have. I try to hang on and throw all that I have into love. That’s all we can do really. Keep trying. Keep throwing ourselves in. Keep showing up and keep loving enormously.
