UFR Weekly Newsletter #17: Songs of Devotion
David Cotrone
Lately there’s been a lot of talk about loneliness. A couple years ago I saw someone and I didn’t want it to work but it did. I was stubborn and thought I could do it all on my own, didn’t think I needed that kind of help. I probably didn’t but I figured I wouldn’t have had anyone else. I was wrong. All I needed to do was look to the person next to me. All I needed to do was ask.
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A Strange Brilliance by Jen Knox
If You Weren’t Here by Erin Fitzgerald
Three poems by Parker Tettleton
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I was talking to someone over a meal and he said no one writes good love songs anymore, that all you hear are covers. I didn’t agree. But I thought about artists of the past who made a living through remaking, people like Eva Cassidy and Joe Cocker. Everyone has a favorite version but no matter what they still like the song. There’s nothing wrong with that.
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The other morning I didn’t know how I was going to get up. It hurt because I had things to be doing and it hurt more because I thought I had made progress. In her book, Emily White says, If I couldn’t ward it away, I could at least see it as clearly as it saw me. Loneliness will never leave but you can leave loneliness. I was trying to think of ways to make that happen. I thought of all of you.
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A contributor wrote in to say thanks. I couldn’t thank her enough. You all make UFR what it is; it’s a house for you to fill up.
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He said he felt strange talking about love. I thought of how people visit Nerve 5.5 million times each month, how movies and books are at their best when there’s something like it going on, how the first cassette I owned was The Raw and the Cooked by the Fine Young Cannibals, the first song on it called “She Drives Me Crazy,” how it’s all hard to talk about despite the numbers. Later, he said he didn’t think you could listen to love songs if you couldn’t relate, said there’s breaking, having and wanting and sometimes you don’t feel any of those, sometimes all of them. I’d never thought about it like that. I didn’t know what to say.
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Sorry about this message’s affection — maybe it’s the weather.
Be well,
David