Steve Earle is a brilliant song writer, and his song Valentine's Day is beautiful and you know, just know, that it comes from his screwing up on Valentine's Day. But it is also a wonderful expression of his love for his wife (the one he married twice "Our divorce didn't work out."). When it came up on the iPod last week I thought I came up with the perfect gift. I would sing Valentine's Day for Leah, put it on a DVD and give it to her.
Now I like to think I can sing. In reality I'd probably be one of those contestants on Idol that just doesn't get it ("No? Let me sing one more song. Just one more, you'll see." "Stupid judges. I am an Idol, wait until I make it big. I'll buy them!" – That sort of thing.). But I got a hold of a friend of mine, who does have talent, and asked him if he'd accompany me on the guitar. I must have listened to the song every waking moment, well every waking moment that Leah wasn't home. This was going to be good.
Dwight wasn't able to open the copy of the song I emailed him, so he simply downloaded, but he downloaded another version. When he got here Friday we had about an hour an a half to get our act together, and get the song recorded. He shone. Me not so much. But its the thought that counts right? When he finally had to leave we had about three recordings of the song, the last one the best but far from perfect (and I'll stress again that it was my singing not the guitar playing). I even shot some close up footage of his playing the bridge so I could fade it in during that portion of the song.
So I had some footage, that while imperfect, was heartfelt and that is the main thing. I now had a few hours to edit and burn the DVD. My computer wouldn't let me. My poor old G4 is in the grips of senescence, it could not handle the video in Final Cut. I could listen to the clips but I couldn't view an entire clip of video. I also have Final Cut on the Powerbook that I use as another desktop, but it wouldn't load, and tht means I have to find the software and reinstall it.
After a couple of hours of this I threw my hands up in submission, hoping against hope that Leah was getting me a brand new 8 core Mac Pro for Valentine's. In the end I played the raw footage for her this morning, I really had no other cards to play. Her initial reaction was that she didn't understand the words, so I sang it to her in person, something I should have done in the first place.
You know, I'm not sure, but I think she liked it. She didn't even ask where her roses were.
Comments
2 responses
If my husband ever went to this much trouble for me on Valentines Day, he’d be getting a major reward. 🙂
You might not think it that much trouble if you heard my voice Karen.