These Eyes & Mind Reading

Sometimes a song says it the way you would if only you were a brilliant and talented songwriter. And the oldies station we listen to in my department at work dredges up some songs that echo in a much different way in my head now than they did when I heard them their first time around. Before I had lived the experiences that give them a whole new connotation. There are two songs in my head in the last week or so that resonate for me emotionally not because I associate a particular live event with them. But because they now express precisely how I felt when my marriage was falling apart. Maybe because I have enough emotional and chronological distance from that painful time to understand what was going on. For both of us. Thanks to Burton Cummings and Randy Bachman of the Guess Who and Mr. Gordon Lightfoot for shining some light into one of the darkest periods of my life. Excerpts from These Eyes and If You Could Read My Mind follow.

These eyes watched you bring my world to an end
This heart could not accept and pretend
The hurtin's on me yeah
That I will never be free no no no
You took a vow with me yeah
You spoke it you spoke it babe

If you could read my mind love, what a tale my thoughts could tell
Just like an old time movie, 'bout a ghost from a wishing well
In a castle dark or a fortress strong with chains upon my feet
But stories always end
And if you read between the lines you'll know that I'm just trying to understand
The feelings that you lack
I never thought I could feel this way and I've got to say that I just don't get it
I don't know where we went wrong but the feeling's gone and I just can't get it back