bending towards the sun
sometime in the 90s, jeff buckley and elizabeth fraser recorded a song together, "all flowers in time bend towards the sun." they dated briefly, infatuated with each other's voices, according to an interview with elizabeth. this song is evidently a record of their intense bond. she didn't want this track to be released, most speculating due to jeff's unfortunate passing in 1997. and yet, somehow the song found its way online through a leak.
admittedly, the first time i listened was in secret, funnily, deep into the recesses of private browsing, as if elizabeth is keeping tabs on who's listening. it's funny, too, in a way, that i'm referring to both of them on first name bases. that's the thing, though. the song is so personal. unfinished, as well, being a demo, but it's like i'm interrupting something intimate when i listen--or, even, like i asked either of them to tell me about the other, and out spills the reverie of being unabashedly enamored.
while i heard about this song a few years ago, i've only recently felt compelled to listen more. really listen.
the hallmark of the song is elizabeth's soft giggle just as it begins. i can imagine from the moment her laugh interlaces into the opening riff that they both barely took their eyes off of each other while recording. at some bits, it sounds like they're smiling while singing. maybe it took many takes because of that! maybe that's why it felt "unfinished!"
the idiosyncrasies of both of their cadences just make sense, strikingly blending the way they do, in the way sunlight eddies into a river's face. i grin ear-to-ear hearing the way jeff hits highs and elizabeth hits lows in "i know you say that there's no one for you, but here is one." oh, how exhilarating it is to allow yourself to bend towards the sun! the joy it reveals!
and the bridge! there goes jeff musing, "with your face in my window glow, oh, where will you weep for me, sweet willow?" and elizabeth responding--through an anxious, misty-eyed, but brave fragility--"it's okay to be angry, but not to hurt me!" there's something so... marvelous about the two in conversation, wrestling with self-preservation yet yearning to be vulnerable.
this time around, i played the song at a higher volume and caught the last few seconds of jeff ad libbing briefly, and elizabeth is caught off guard and (presumably) laughs and utters "oh god" as if they're in public, or some setting where she'd feel mildly embarrassed, but not in a negative way. it's that kind of fluster when you realize you're so immersed in the world with your person that the bubble pops and you come up for air and the coolness dissipates because looking at them, thinking of them makes you feel warm in the face. you don't even realize you're smiling hard until you do, and they are, too, and then, everything is right in the world.
it does feel intrusive, listening, but this song is such a beautiful record of a deep, loving, effusive connection. i'm grateful to be a witness. i have contention towards takes of love being this mythical concept of striking gold with biochemical reactions, but nothing more, because how can one say love is unattainable, so far gone, away, when this is one of many ways it can delineate itself?