Tonight… There Will Be No Light

Christmas Eve in Tokyo

Is just like Valentine’s Day

Couples gather at restaurants

Overflowing with romantic ambiance

For dinner is the hallmark

Most couples, while together,

Heed their culture and discipline

And thus they keep their distance

While a metre of wooden table separates them

They behave as if thousands of kilometres apart

Except… sometimes…

A mischievous look

A playful smile

Sneaks upon their faces

So subtly

So briefly

A fleeting, naughty suggestion that later

In private

The couples will become closer

Much closer

Closer than the man draws his scarf

Around his neck as he makes his way home

(Which is not his home)

For dinner

Alone

While his love

His life

Is waiting at his real home

Thousands of kilometres away

Fades of Grey

I was listening to Haim’s “Days are Gone” and Samantha Fox’s self-titled album on the same “car trip” (i.e., “traffic jam”) the other day when a realization struck me: when did songs stop using the slow fade-out to cue the listener that they are about to end? That technique seemed to be fairly commonplace in the 1980s (with some exceptions, which are always there to test the “rule”), but not so much (if at all) today.

I’m not sure which I prefer, the slow fade or the abrupt end… whether in songs or life in general. I had personally experienced the abrupt one, and am now painfully witnessing a loved one going through a slow fade. In both cases, the ending isn’t so obvious.