Lilac & Lavender
Oscar Wilde used lavender as a gay shibboleth, and this delightful flower has been used for ages by queer people like the fish on the sand, to announce themselves only to those to whom it may concern, because of course, many people consider their identity to be wrong. Those people are called “cunts”.
Lavender is a humble, un-glamorous flower. It’s not super fussy to grow and maintain, given you keep in mind it’s a living thing with needs.
Lilacs are pretty, and they’re out of the ordinary. They are associated with pure love, spirituality and plenitude. Everything I’d like to reach and everything I’d like to be.
This is not a traditional love song, because the one I’m singing this to isn’t a flesh-and-bone human person. I could tell you that this is about Lyla, the Argentinian exotic dancer, cryptic movie maker and photographer, but that’s a made-up person, created with the intention to fool you. Completely different from the made-up person this song is about, who I created to fool myself.
I was always more drawn to Aristotle rather than Plato, but the latter’s dialectic world view is quite ingrained into our western, judeo-christian societal worldview. Even if, like myself, you don’t like it and can’t bring yourself to fully accept it, the notion of a world of ideas where everything we represent down here in our physical (and even mental) world exists in its totality is charming, and even comforting.
On the other hand, “there is a world out there where true love and happiness exist, but it’s inherently separate from the plane of existence I can experience” is a pretty doomy idea, and it’s the root for many of our depressions, including, but not limited to, Catholic trauma and all of our self-destructive hedonist habits. We need to let go of the notion that our ideas are untouchable, perfect and undiscardable. We need to say goodbye to some dreams and conceptions.
The last vocal I laid down for Dreaming of Roses was the verse right after the guitar solo. I was overcome with emotion, and you can hear it. I might even be a little pitchy, but again, I think it does what the song asks for. Light a candle, look for me…
I wrote this song in late 2021, early 2022. In my head I still see a music video for it, filmed in a foggy hill covered in lavenders, somewhere near Campos do Jordão. That will probably never happen.
Stop thinking ‘bout the spaces
Start looking at the signs
A glimpse of your strange purple hue tonight
Flawless light shines above me
Unlike any real light
And the underside of trees
Glows an unnatural shade of white
You are lilac, I am lavender
It’s a match made to last
While you float through in perfection
I will walk over my past
It’s a matter of illusion
Figment of a blooming mind
Revealing inside where you are confined
You’re a flower of my own birth
My creation in my head
You’re not alive, but you’re certainly not dead
You are lilac, I am lavender
It’s a match made to last
While I slide into oblivion
Your shape is forever cast
You are lilac, I am lavender
Light a match inside our room
If you’re not there, right beside me
I’ll light a candle, look for you
You are lilac, I am lavender
Our souls were made to meet
When you fly into the night sky
Light a lantern, look for me
‘Cause you are lilac, I am lavender
I’ll stay here, you will fly
When you tell me that you’re ready
I’ll light a pyre, say goodbye
