A Grumpy Love Song

This story will be familiar to some of you. I needed a Grumpy column and came across my one and only attemps at song-writing and the circumstances around it and thought I'd recycle a bit. It really is a coincidence that I've moved to this city and that I am currently working in this particular theatre.

Grumpy

Grumpy is freelance writer Lee Bemrose (leebemrose@hotmail.com) His new venture as a love balladeer extraordinaire may be shorter lived than he hoped.

When it comes to writing, I've tried most forms with varying degrees of success... or varying degrees of failure, depending on how you view these things. I've been lucky enough to win an award for a sad love story, have had sad and funny love stories published in a variety of mags and lit journals and even the odd crime story has found an audience. I just think what the hell, you have to give things a go.

Rummaging through old files recently I discovered that I have also tried a bit of song writing. It all came about after I reviewed an internationally famous cabaret diva and in my review (which, I guess, did turn into a bit of a declaration of love) I mentioned that by the end of her show I “was comatose with desire.”

Bugger me, I thought, wouldn't Comatose With Desire make a good song title. Sounded like something The Smiths would come up with. Next time I interviewed the internationally famous cabaret diva I told her about my idea for a song for her. Her response? “Stop stalking me.”

Encouraged by her enthusiasm, I set about writing my first love song:

Comatose With Desire

I would walk the desert sands for you,
Move mountains and part seas for you,
I would hold my breath and turn blue for you,
You make me comatose with desire.

Comatose with desire,
Comatose with desire,
You make me
Comatose with desire.

Your presence penetrates me,
It envelopes and smothers me,
You choke the very life out of me,
And make me comatose with desire.

(Chorus)

Your beauty intoxicates,
It makes my pupils dilate,
And my heart fibrillate,
I’m so comatose with desire.

(Chorus)

To know you is to know humility,
You degrade and humiliate me,
And leave me snivelly and whimpery,
And comatose with desire.

(Chorus)

My unrequited lust for you,
Has crushed my heart, it’s true,
And another vital organ or two,
And left me comatose with desire.

(Chorus)

I am a peaceful village,
That you rape and pillage,
My heart buuuurns for yoooo... because you set it on fire,
I am comatose with desire.

(Chorus)

Your indifference to me
Has made me quite loony,
I am drugged...
And bound...
And dribbling...
In the... mental... asylum... of love...

(Chorus, with sad echoey effects and maybe one of those eerie theremin things).

I sent the song to my diva. Her response? “Really, darling, if you don't stop stalking me...” She also pointed out that the song made no sense because if she sang it, who was she singing it to? Who was the 'You' in the song. Me, I ventured? “I don't sing love songs to stalkers.”

I interviewed her for another mag twice after that (“Stop stalking me! Stop stalking me!”), but it's gone quiet between us since then.

By complete coincidence, the new city I've recently moved to is also the hometown of our internationally famous cabaret diva. And by an even bigger coincidence I've scored a job at the very same theatre she performs her new show at in a few short weeks.

It's going to be so lovely to catch up with her again.