Maurice Denis:
But It is the Heart That Beats Too Quickly,
plate twelve from Love (1898)
published 1899 by Ambroise Vollard

"No way could we ever possibly be tempted to say …"

Just To Break A Heart

"Half truth, and half promise
like we knew our future from the start.
I told you the truth when I said I loved you,
it came right from my heart.
Then we moved through our lives with confident strides,
just as if we knew love, just as if we controlled our hearts.
Let's just say as we tumble away
that we played Just To Break A Heart."

The yin/yang symbol illustrates how this world might seem equally divided between light and dark, but that the dark also contains a spot of light and the light, a spot of dark. So it seems with all things. What starts as joy might evolve into its opposite, but a bitter sweet opposite. Residue of the originating intentions seem destined to always linger, though they might never hold adequate power to recover whatever might have been misplaced, lost, or utterly destroyed in the transitions. Everything here always remains in motion, on the way to someplace else. Nothing seems terribly static.

"Then when the lies came,
they held promise, like they held our aching jealous hearts.
When I tried to explain what had come between us, my words just blew apart.
Then that sense of surprise left us compromised
It left us hoping for love, just as if love would have a heart..
Just no way we'd be tempted to say
that we played Just To Break A Heart."

Things also tend to turn into their opposite. Efforts to grow closer can seem off-putting. The process of coming together usually involves considerable coming apart. The terms and conditions accompanying Happily Ever Afters humble their conception. We might grow closer but never without seeing through original convictions. I sat last night with my granddaughter while we both realized that we'd somehow grown bored with each other. I apologized for growing incapable of properly inciting her. I didn't even seem able to serve as the target of her considerable willfulness. We were instead, simply exhausted with each other's presence. I surprised myself with my indifference. I wondered if I did this or if it was just the way of this world sometimes. I didn't know for certain.

"And nothin' looks quite the same, they say,
when you stop to look behind.
If love is deaf and love is dumb,
then our love was surely blind.
And though we just had the best of intentions, I guess,
the future perceives just the footprints we leave behind.
Let's just say as we wander away
that we played Just To Break A Heart."

I wrote this song while still imbedded in the shadow of my first divorce and dismemberment, a transition I hope to never even remotely replicate. It was gut-wrenching, soul-crushing, and deeply humiliating while also being grist for my maturing songwriting machine. It was as close to a lament as I'd ever considered writing. It came straight from my heart by way of my butt. It blew out of me, if you'll excuse my description. I tumbled, stumbled, and wandered out of love, utterly stunned. I never recovered. I learned, at least preliminarily, how unrecoverable some things can become; how fragile and irreplaceable. Also how choices carry unintended consequence. When The Muse and I chose exile, we carried no intention of creating the abiding tension the absence of proximity produces. We were just trying to survive. We authored an alienation perhaps irreversible just because we weren't often there. We might each have to sometimes choose Just To Break A Heart to live.

"Truth told, it's beyond us,
there's this feeling like we've gone too far.
How can I explain the only one to blame
was a wish upon a star?
Everybody's sayin' "Star Light, star bright,"
even though they know the first twinkling star
will be the first star to fall apart.
Let's just say as we stumble away
that we played Just To Break A Heart."

Acceptance resolves nothing but the struggle to understand. It does not resolve it with understanding, though, but with a blooming conviction that understanding was never very likely to bring resolution. Love as well as its dissolution remains as abiding mystery, each easily as mysterious as its opposite. The hearts we just break, we just as inadvertently ennoble, and seemingly just as willfully. Will enters into surprisingly little when it comes to relationships and their changes. It might be true that no relationship ever truly ends, they morph into other, less familiar forms. They probably never go away, however distant the principles.

"Half truth, half promise
like we knew our future from the start.
I tell you the truth when I say I love you,
it comes right from my heart.
Let us move through our lives
with the confident strides,
just as if we know love, just as if we control our hearts.
Just no way we'll be tempted to say
that we played Just To Break A Heart."

The cycle continues. Aspiration reigns superior to any realization. We crash and burn only to insist upon taking to the air again, bereft while also continuously hopeful. I recognize myself now as an utterly alien being to almost everyone I'd ever been before. As I dredge up my songs, I'm remembering experiences that seem like fiction to me. I cannot quite believe that I lived through, let alone that I survived, them. I did. The chronicles persist and almost recreate the emotional environment. I was never just one person, it seems from this great distance. I was many, most beyond my knowing at any odd moment. I was mostly focused upon the then dominant one and the one I was then aspiring to become. My archive of past selves only entered into it when I was performing, reanimating past performances in which I originally starred, now as a witness rather than as the protagonist. Not a single song was ever once fictional in origin. Each blesséd one began with some hard-won life lesson I wanted, for some reason, to stick with me long term. So they became songs.

"Let us move through our lives with the confident strides,
just as if we knew love, just as if we controlled our hearts."

No way could we ever possibly be tempted to say that we played Just To Break A Heart.
©1989 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

©2022 by David A. Schmaltz - all rights reserved

Tags: #SetTheory, #PureSchmaltz