Take "And It Stoned Me." I have never been caught in a downpour half a mile from a county fair. I have never carried fishing gear, with tackle on my back. And I don't think that I've even stood with my back against a fence. But I have been with a friend when plans were halted for one reason or another. I have been with people in the midst of minor events that seemed major. And I have been forced, complaints and all, to make do . . . only to learn that the act of making do produced an abundance that previous plans would have lacked. We lingered in the midst of failed plans, and, in doing so, made clear that it was company, not activity, that we desired. Half a mile from a county fair or an evening spent on a DC stoop, they're the same, and only Morrison drives that home for me.
In some ways, I suppose that I'm lying right now--or, at the very least, exaggerating to make a point. All songs, in their ability to linger, to repeat, to play over and over and over again, illuminate this space where a mutual, melancholic longing makes intimacy possible. This effect isn't unique to Morrison. And the songs that most resonate with me are those that can, in a note or word, generate that sense of intimacy.
The Dramatics' "Thank You For Your Love" is a good example of how a song uses sound itself to communicate intimacy. If Morrison guides the listener toward what we might call the intersection of melancholy and intimacy, The Dramatics' harmonies might just be intimacy's best defenders. On it, the lead voice enters alone, only to be joined by a second voice at the altogether oddly placed third beat of the first bar. This odd structure and entry seems to me to be the sonic enactment of initial longing--bare, melancholic, painful--and then an-almost-too-late-but-right-on-time fulfillment, a partnership that comes not at the end but close enough. In the course of a bar, we learn not of patience, not of reward, not of cliched notions of love--though those, too, are present--but of the texture of waiting and the often invisible, unappreciated ease in which waiting transforms into intimacy. Like "And it Stoned Me," "Thank You For Your Love" reminds us that no matter how easy it may be to slip into others, the melancholic material, that sad longing substance or stuff required to get there can never be--should never be--taken for granted.
