learn to find your way in darkness

Yesterday morning I woke up with the lyrics of "Learn to be lonely" running through my head. Specifically, I woke up with "Learn to be lonely da da da da da" running through my head because it's one of those songs with a memorable chorus and a lot of filler words.

I started to think about the words. Learn to be lonely. What exactly does that mean? If you're lonely, you're meant to give up on relationships with the people around you and learn to accept it? Or is it a lover's lament – without me you must learn to be lonely?

Lonely people. I began to think about Hitler. Was he lonely? I stopped this train of thought when I remembered that multiple friends have described me as the type of person who would defend Hitler. Nope.

So I'm leaving the song to its context. It belongs to a disfigured child who is taunted and abused for being different. He grows up in solitude, grasping for power and significance, haunting the halls of an opera house, watching the merriment from afar – from his shadows. He falls in love with a beautiful young singer with soft eyes and long dark hair, singing to her and training her from a distance. She responds to him differently than anybody ever has; with curiosity and – affection? She is his. All he wants and needs and desires. But she chooses another. And now he must learn to be lonely.

**

According to my father, the word for snow in Farsi is "barf." During his childhood in Iran, one of the major laundry detergent brands was "Barf," named after the pure, white, cleanliness of snow.

**

It turns out that Taylor Swift is quite the figurative little lovechild. I tried to maintain continuity in one of my classes by using another of her songs as a listening exercise. I have three of her songs on my iPod which helped narrow my choice to: Teardrops on my guitar.

Drew ______ at _____
I fake a _______ so he won't _______

etc.

The problems started early. "Who can explain this first section to me?" I asked. "Drew looks at me, I fake a smile so he won't see."

Stefan volunteered. "Drew is...like this," he made a scribble on his paper.

"Yes," I agreed. "But in English it's also a name."

"No it's not."

"Yes it is. Drew is looking at her and so she fakes a smile so that he can't see she's in love with him." They stared at me.

We moved on. "'Drew talks to me. I laugh 'cause it's just so funny, that I can't even see anyone when he's with me.' What does that mean?"

"She's laughing because he's funny."

"No...she's laughing because it's – sad." More like ironic. But I wasn't going there.

"What?"

"Look at it. She laughing because it's sad because she loves him so much that she can't see anyone else when she's with him."

They stared.

"It's a metaphor," I added (yes, I went there). "It's not that she can't actually see. When she's with him, he's the only person she can see in the room," I mimed blocking them all out and focusing somewhere else.

Clearly my kids aren't old enough to understand the depths of love Taylor has experienced. At least not in English.

**

I've discovered the key to the craziness of the Swedish language: word stresses.

In English, each word has one stress. "If you hear two stresses, you hear two words." (Englishclub.com).

In Swedish, they throw around stresses like Bjorn Borg underwear ads.



(This one is all over the SL Metro Stations)

Seriously. And they don't just throw a couple of stresses into three or four syllable words – where there's a syllable, there's a way: they stick them into two syllable words. I have several students named "Karin" and couldn't pronounce it for the life of me until someone told me that I needed to stress both syllables.

**

Speaking of Swedish Tunnelbanan ads, some of my latest favorites are ones titled "The many ways of sisters." This is a series of (what I'm assuming are) clothing ads with the same girl duplicated several times in each photo. Yes, she looks like she could be sisters.



(on the ads, they have "The many ways of sisters" in black letters across the image)

After the sister campaign started, they launched a "Brothers" campaign. Just...Brothers. Apparently there is only one way of brother.

These men look nothing like brothers except that they both share a "concerned but slightly bored" brooding look. Amadeus loves these ads. I haven't figured out why.