I Can't Make You Love Me

As adverse as I am to using other writer's works in my blog, I just felt like talking about one of the best lyrics ever writ...that of "I Can't Make You Love Me" by Mike Reid and Allen Shamblin, most famously performed by the great Bonnie Raitt.

To any romantic who has ever suffered a reversal in the sphere of Venus, it speaks, brutally and beautifully.

"Turn down the lights, turn down the bed
Turn down these voices inside my head
Lay down with me, tell me no lies
Just hold me close, don't patronize - don't patronize me"

We all want to hear the words, but we don't want to be lied to. People who say "I love you" out of pity or patronization wound us, create an illusion. I had a lover once that I confessed a sorrow to because I knew she did not love me. She pointed out that since I did love her, my lovemaking was an expression of my heart, and thus was earnest and true. Hard thoughts, perhaps, even hollow, but true. Even ennobling.

"Cause I can't make you love me if you don't
You can't make your heart feel something it won't
Here in the dark, in these final hours
I will lay down my heart and I'll feel the power
But you won't, no you won't
Cause I can't make you love me, if you don't"

It is painful, trying to communicate the love, the passion, the truth, praying to the silent gods within us that we will find reciprocity to the integrity of our hearts. Sometimes it is a lost cause, when we give our hearts to those unwilling, unworthy or uncertain. But when we stop daring to love, we stop living.

"I'll close my eyes, then I won't see
The love you don't feel when you're holding me
Morning will come and I'll do what's right
Just give me till then to give up this fight
And I will give up this fight"

Been there. There is a sense of defeat, a sense of desolation, like knowing you will wake to find yourself alone in a world of total lifelessness. The desire, the hope, the desperate prayer that someone this one last chance to connect will lead to an epiphany in their heart. When Prince performs this song he includes words referring to "this bedroom-slash-church". A lover sees the sacred nature of their passion, the metaphysical aspect to the physical desire. The transcendence of love.

"Cause I can't make you love me if you don't
You can't make your heart feel something it won't
Here in the dark, in these final hours
I will lay down my heart and I'll feel the power
But you won't, no you won't"

In the end, we have no control over the hearts of others, and we don't want it. Would you truly want the love of someone whose free will you had usurped? The word for that in the physical sphere is rape. What would it be in the emotional or spiritual sphere? Nothing I would want linked to my name.

"Cause I can't make you love me, if you don't"

Absolutely.