arc of love
LYRICIST Notes

Linda's Take

Phil's View

Before we wrote this song, I thought about how love can be liberating and freeing from conventions and fears. I'm always amazed at how much strength you can glean from it, when it's right. Things that seem impossible to cope with or achieve are all of a sudden within your reach. Love doesn't only touch the heart, it gets into your head, and if you can face the moon, as we wrote, you can rise with it too.  

Being in love is a natural process but one we manage to frustrate most of the time. We want to give it a chance but it exposes our vulnerabilities and we fear its costs. We spend most of our time building the walls to protect us rather than looking over them to see what our chances are. But the right kind of love is stronger than our pride and in the song it propels us down the mountainside. 

Two people can make a rocket ship that takes them to places they never thought they’d go. And when it’s passionate, you fly even higher. 

There is a pull and a push in life. Soaring is roaring and the flame is a  sign that time has changed.

I wrote the basis for this song sitting on the bedroom floor in my house in New Jersey, thinking I was going to have to roll the dice on life and make some big changes.

This was Linda’s story. But her recounting it to me made it mine as well.

When couples are separated, the relationship can be stretched like a rubber band. The thinner it gets, the more it gets pulled. Yet, the heart always reaches for love. This song is about people separating and their endurance.

Blue in the Heart is about real people. In today’s world, compromises are made. It’s hard. And too much time can pass between people. But if the flame is strong enough, the fire will burn when they return.

Phil wrote this song for me but I’m pretty sure others will find themselves in it, too. My life has been full of twists and turns, and at times, no vision. As he wrote, sometimes it was only life’s deadly fright. We don’t get to plan life sometimes, even if we have dreams burning in our hearts. We have free will but it’s highly overrated and when we're young, we often don't have the experience to help ourselves navigate life. Forces outside of us and inside of us, too, our minds, often prevent us from our path. Hopefully we get to be a new person. I know I did.

This is a gift to Linda.

If we're lucky, a hot beat and a surging night can be the keys to unlocking quiet souls.

There is a tipping point in a relationship when you either decide to get out or you jump in.

I convinced Phil we should take dancing lessons for our wedding. We were actually okay but I thought it would be fun. And it was. The dance instructor kept repeating “slow, slow, quick, quick,” and after a while we caught on.

Two left feet are not an impediment to having a good time.

Verbal communication is not the only way to talk to your partner.

A smile is worth a paragraph. A laugh is a page. Good humor can last you through the book of life.

This was Phil's baby. He wrote the lyrics for this one himself. They're haunting and beautiful.

Love is ethereal. Without it, the heavy vapors of our lives consume our purpose. The air is thin in the highest clouds when one can see into space. The stars look back at us as though we should have always known. Their message has a million generations and registers something true. Bodies become ethereal as Linda and mine did on a busy street in Manhattan when we floated in starlight.

I very much believe that love is a vapor made of Christmas cheer. You will never hold it but it will never leave you.

This song has much more to do with people than holidays. Relationships become clearer at Christmas but not necessarily better.

Consensus can be a rare concept in songwriting and most other parts of life.

After all that slow, slow, quick, quick dancing, we didn't end up dancing with the stars, but we did end up dancing under the stars.

When I sing about twists and turns in life in Trails in My Life, I think that women have more twists and turns today than ever before.

The commitment that military families make always reminds me of Blue in the Heart.