When No One Is Loving You
"What a person needs / Is hard for me to say / Each someone has a special way / Of giving love and hate."
I wrote this track in October 2021 while trying to write dance music, which I seem to have more or less lost any ability to do. It was the period when I realised that I only like my work if it’s unforced and spontaneous. If someone tasks me with a specific goal, or I task myself, I rarely like the output. A vague direction works, but the best results seem to come from free exploration and play.
So this tune started with me trying to do one thing, but I like it because I abandoned that project and followed my gut. By the time I wrote this, I’d been writing songs from perspectives other than mine for a little while, but it wasn’t always clear to the listener, so in this song, I spell it out: “And I've been saving mine for forty years.” Clearly, this can’t be the Steve of Steve on Steve, who is not forty. Clearly. In the song, it’s not quite as obvious when “she” replies but, today, I’m able to use the wonderful device of quotation marks to make that clear. I think at one point it was supposed to be longer, with more narrative, but I didn’t want to think of new verses and musical parts. I think.
The title for the album Giving Love and Hate comes from this track, obviously.
And though she loved your stories,
And the games you used to play,
She never felt as good at home
As the day she went away.
She says she waited for you
On her little wooden bed,
Waited for a master
To come unwind her threads.
And now she's looking for you,
Or she's looking for someone.
Maybe she's just lost her way,
Or is waiting to be changed.
She asked me what my thoughts all were,
And well, I gave just one:
The only thing that living's taught me
Is you probably need someone.
Cause hope is based on what you do,
Begin by doing, find your truth,
You need to listen as you move,
Hope lives in other people, too.
And groceries don't grow on trees,
And wakefulness is born in sleep,
You know there's no synonymy
Between truth and this economy.
I know the feeling comes,
The feeling goes away,
And life is left to pay.
And I know that when I hear you through,
And give you words to nourish you,
You say "Don't sell that selfish shit,
The fact is, I can handle it.
"You need to work upon your wish,
Life gives you back what you give it,
If you stop and listen for too long
You'll wind up singing a funeral song."
So she sits and writes through the night
At a little wooden desk.
There's barely space for a pile of books,
Let alone space for a friend.
She knows she needs something to say,
Or she thinks it, anyway.
She told it to me weeks ago,
But we were drunk, and it was late.
I can't remember last I saw her
Smiling through a day.
I think the urge to say something
Might just be in her way.
Though what a person needs
Is hard for me to say,
Each someone has a special way
Of giving love and hate.
But don't listen to me, if you're wise,
Though the wise do, nonetheless.
For an expert at knowing what is good
Is an expert at saving face.
And I've been saving mine for forty years,
Fifty, say some friends.
But still, I think I've learned one thing through all the beers and tears and fears.
It's that: from time to time,
You gotta open your heart and love someone,
When no one is loving you.
When no one is loving you,
When no one is loving you,
When no one is loving you,
When no one is loving you.
Loving you,
Loving you,
Loving you,
Loving you.