Today

A Reverie

Like many, I knew the powerful, yet over-played Jefferson Airplane hits from the 60s like Somebody to Love, sung by Grace Slick. Yet, among others of the time, this band was deeply talented; their repertoire went far deeper than the singles. The Marty Balin offerings really struck me: his rich voice, his ballads tender and unabashed. The eclectic album Surrealistic Pillow epitomized the San Francisco sound and the Psychedelic era: a time and place of enchantment for me to this day.

My favorite number, the ethereal Today, occupies rare air because it behaves in contrast to our expectations of standard love-song fare. In lieu of glowingly describing his lover, he regales us with his overflowing love, his burgeoning reverence.

We know little of her, save the grandiose state she inspires. Not her perfume nor the shape of her eyes. Because he’s chosen instead to narrate the primeval force that subsumes him. His soul has become love’s vessel. Yet his is no parasitic possession, no mere infatuation—but an inner saturation, heralding the august arrival of the overman.

The song is a procession. As verses advance and pervade, the harmonic intensity grows—rippling, stirring, and swelling at the transcendent unity of his love experience.

As a listener and a lover, digesting such a song inspires similar states. Through these offerings, we acknowledge love’s embodiment. We relish the splendor of our love stores which the song captures and colors and translates. The towering adoration it reveals and reawakens: our majestic capacity to see and want and choose. We savor and project this affinity to the other, even in absentia.

There exists no feeling more certain or more rare. When reciprocated, the joy is boundless. Yet even as I awoke in the absence of she who I adored, my love radiated so pure, so humble and so alive. It would conquer any obstacle. No circumstance could deny this love’s veracity.

I stared back ensconced as she revealed with unguarded eyes and hushed sobs her innermost secrets. They kissed my heart and rang bells in my mind, these words lost on pages wet with tears. But the movie didn’t end that way.

Yet when I laid down worry and fear and the deep sense of loss, this unyielding Love was all that remained of me. An open letter, a promise, a message in a bottle, bobbing and floating up to eternity.