Friday, November 20, 2009

Slave to Parental Love

Regular reader Black Sea sent this wonderful response to one of my earlier posts. I thought it too good to leave in the Comments tail.

This bit of pop trivia may interest you. I was this morning watching on Youtube the video of Bryan Ferry's 1985 song "Slave to Love," when I noticed something rather remarkable. (Actually, it was pointed out by one of the Youtube commenters.)

"Slave to Love" is -- or maybe seems -- one of Ferry's classy paeans to erotic enchantment. Certainly much of the song is, but note that at the end of the video, as he's singing "The tide is turning, and so it seems, we're too young to reason, too grown up to dream" he's also sitting in a darkened bedoom, on the edge of the bed. Of course, one expects him to be crooning to his lover. As the camera pans down the bed, we see that he's looking at his sleeping child. In other words, it's a song about the maturation of erotic obsession into familial love.

I'm sure some people will find this trite or sentimetal, but as the father of two young daughters, I have to say that it struck me differently. Of course, it probably helps that I think Bryan Ferry more or less defines the word "suave."

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