On the car radio on this Saturday–it must have been request hour for souls with unmended broken hearts, driving or sequestered in their Tampa Bay bungalos, eager to spread their longing and long memories over the airwave of local 88.5 FM community radio…
No one in the songs they were requesting were asking much — just…stay around….please?
Dusty Springfield sang:…You don’t have to say you love me, just be close at hand….believe me, I’ll never tie you down….
The Foundations lead vocalist Hubert Montgomery sang:… baby, now that I’ve found you, I can’t let you go
I’ll build my world around you, I need you so…even though I know you don’t need me
You don’t need me…( in fact she told him) you wanna leave me…
It were as if a profane benediction were heralding “the world’s swift passage to the fire” in the words of the obscure decadent poet (Ernest Dowson – 1867-1900) who himself endured a tragic love affair and gave us, along with Hollywood, Johnny Mercer, Henry Mancini, Jack Lemmon and Lee Remick a phrase from a poem with a name borrowed from the poet Horace “Vitae summa brevis spem nos vetat incohare longam” (Latin for “The brief sum of life forbids us the hope of enduring long) and which reads…
They are not long, the days of wine and roses: Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for a while, then closes
Within a dream.
Somewhere else, Mr. Dowson asks…
When shall men cease to suffer and desire?
And as Cher must still be singing somewhere….the beat goes on….”
19 Cent Notebook 