A while back I wrote a blog post about Robbie Williams' “Feel.” To me the song gives a helpful phrase for the kind of life I want to build. I don’t want a happily ever after, I want a life ever after. If Williams gave us a phrase, then Abba gives us a map for how a life ever after is lived.
I am at a juncture with someone I am dating so this song really is sinking in right now! The opening verse is exactly what it feels like after the first two dates with someone. You go out with someone a few times and “for every time / I'm getting more open-hearted.” When you like the person, you hope that your open heart will be received in kind. But the chorus roles around and Abba asks the question: “What's the name of the game?/ Does it mean anything to you?” In a very literal way, dating can feel like this nameless game in which you are shuffling between revealing yourself, but not too much, or beginning to care about someone, but not caring too much so as not to scare them away. And if we like the person, we hope that at some point it stops being a game, and starts becoming something real. Toward the end of the song, more pertinent questions are asked. And these are questions you asks when you realise that you want something real with the person you are dating:
If I trust in you, would you let me down? Would you laugh at me, if I said I care for you? Could you feel the same way too?
Someone, anyone, please tell me “the name of the game!”
This is a song of marital strife. And I say marital as short hand, but anyone who has been in a long term, live in relationship understands what it’s like to wake up the day after an argument with “No smiles, not a single word at the breakfast table.” It seems their argument is not resolved and “You leave and slam the door / Like you've done many times before.” There is no sound that feels more final than your partner walking out in the middle of an argument and slamming the door. Yet, this is a powerfully optimistic song. After briefly entertaining the idea of leaving the relationship, there’s a "sound of the key in the door / you smile and I realise that we need a shake-up / our love is a precious thing/ worth the pain and the suffering / and it's never too late for changing." The placement of this verse is where its power lies. For example, Cinderella lives in an eternal “happy ever after” because the movie ends on a high note. Although we spend the song in the sadness of their strife, we leave the song with the certainty that they are going to remain “two friends and two true lovers” who will “help each other through the hard times.” So it’s a profoundly hopeful song that paints a realistic, but still beautiful version of what love is like when it lasts for a number of years.
Andante Andante (slow, slow) is a moment of slowing down with a lover. I never really understood the song until I was laying on my bed, eyes closed listening to some other song and then I heard the words:
Make your fingers soft and light Let your body be the velvet of the night Touch my soul, you know how Andante, Andante Go slowly with me now
I don’t know if it was because I was in a contemplative mood, or maybe because I was laying on my bed, but I don’t think I need to explain why thse lyrics are about a slow moment of intimacy. “Andante” is a musical term that mean tells players and conductors to play at a moderate or slow tempo. The title of the song sets up the metaphor of sex being the same as playing an a song:
I'm your music and I am your song) Play me time and time again and make me strong (Play me again 'cause you're making me strong)
The word phrase “play me time and time again” to me implies that this is intimacy in the context of a more stable relationship. And in many ways, I think this kind of closeness can only come with a more stable relationship. One of my mantra’s is don’t puff up, don’t shrink down, instead stand on holy ground. So a line like “tread lightly on my ground” really spoke to me. It shifts sex away from this rabbit-like frenzied race, toward the idea of sex being a moment to invite someone — literally inside you — into a place that only you occupy.
Thank you for reading!