Avocado Love Song
we don't watch sunsets
but i love you
we don't go dancing
but i love you
and we don't stare into each other's eyes by candlelight
but i love you
and i know you love me too because
you bring me avocados
instead of flowers
you sing me all your best songs
and listen to me for hours
and it's not so glamorous
it's not so new
but other men can keep their flowers
i'd rather have an avocado from you
there was no thunder
there was no lightning
it wasn't sudden
like love at first sight
we didn't stay up late getting drunk off silly love songs
we spent our time instead on rock'n'roll and movie nights
you bring me avocados
instead of chocolate
you know how i take my coffee
and wait up for me when i'm out late
and we've got another page
in the book of love that no one ever reads
but i'm quietly crazy for you
and you're quietly crazy for me
One of my favourite songs in the whole world, of all time, ever, top five, desert island music is the following:
"John Deere Green" as performed by the Joe Diffie Band.
What a good song it is!!! It's the story of Billy Bob and Charlene (THE NAMES!), how they got together in high school, and how one night Billy Bob painted the words "Billy Bob Loves Charlene" on the town's water tower. And the colour of the paint was not just green, but John Deere green. (For the uninitiated, John Deere is a company that makes tractors, and they are all the same colour of green.) When I first heard this song, I went ballistic and listened to it 17 times in a row. I sent it to my dad and made him listen to it 17 times in a row. We listen to it together every time I go visit, because we are equally passionate about Billy Bob, Charlene, and the regular, every day love they have for each other. None of this fancy Hollywood love for them! Their love may be just the colour of an old combine harvester, but it has borne fruit and endured, and it's perfect just the way it is.
NOW, none of that has anything specifically to do with why I wrote Avocado Love Song. I wrote Avocado Love Song almost 10 years before I knew about Billy Bob and Charlene. But these two songs do exist in the same genre. Randy Travis's "Deeper Than the Holler" is another excellent example of this kind of love song. They tell the listener: "It's ok if you are not screaming your beloved's name into a hurricane. It's ok if you didn't see them walking in slow motion down a staircase and were hypnotized by the colour of their eyes and the smoky sax solo in the background. It's ok if you just kind of knew each other through mutual friends and started liking each other because you were both equally obsessed with The Simpsons' golden age (seasons 2-10). It's. Ok." It is ok. And my song has a central metaphor too, but it's not a tractor or a holler, it's an avocado.
I don't think Julien has ever brought me flowers. Little known fact about me - I don't much care for cut flowers. I will accept them graciously when offered because they are nice, and people who get you flowers are usually being splendid... but I dunno. They just end up in the compost, and the cut flower industry is an environmental disaster. I'm sure the avocado industry is an environmental disaster too, but at least avocados are delicious. #priorities. ANYWAY. I won't spend a bunch of time explaining the lyrics here because they are fairly prosaic but I will just say this: Julien speaks my love language, and I speak his, and this song is about that. The End. (Ok, actually hopefully not the end. The Middle.)