Fifty for Fifi

*Full confession: I’m guilty of bad research here. I wanted to include this song, and good old Google told me it was released in 1991. Google was wrong, and I having seen one of the first post-Split Enz concerts featuring Crowded House and Schnell Fenster in approximately 1988 I should have known. I’ve already written this and I want the song in so here we are, I’m breaking the rules. If you want an actual 1991 song listen to Shiny Happy People.

Anyhow

Apparently I said the words first. I can’t remember the specifics of it so many years later but Fi will tell you I said “I love you” before she said it to me.

It’s a funny phrase. So much meaning can be packed into it. It can be used as a connector, a reminder, even in an accusatory way.

Science fiction author Robert Sheckley wrote a short story about (and called) The Language of Love. In it a young man, Jeff Toms, is challenged by the object of his desire to genuinely be able to tell her he loves her. He of course takes himself to an academic institution and enrolls to study under a professor who is the master of the language of an alien race, the Tyanians, which had a multitude of words for love in the same way the Inuit were said to have a multitude of words for snow.

At the end of an adventure into language and the shades of love Toms now fully equipped presents himself back to his paramour ready to disclose the depths of his affection in exquisite detail. He comes up with “I’m rather fond of you”. That was the end of that, as you can imagine.

I’m more than rather fond of Fi, however I’ve been receiving commentary that in this exercise of blogging I haven’t been making my posts all about her in a way she’d like. The truth is my language of love is expressed through our life together. There are many things about her that I absolutely adore, but what we have together is bigger than that for me.

Today’s song is another from Split Enz. I’ll let is speak for itself, and for me.