Song for the New Year

Here's what I usually do on New Year's Eve: I take a glass of wine, excuse myself from the family festivities, and go to my room, where I usher in the New Year with a solitary toast and Victoria Williams' "This Moment" playing on CD player. Not this year: midnight and I was with K2, no music except for the music playing in my heart. (Awww.) And no, it wasn't Jeff Buckley's version of "Hallelujah." ;)

It took me a couple of days before I found my song for the crossover into 2005, the song that memorializes all the hardship and turmoil and the joy of the year that went past, and expresses all the hope that carries us all into the coming year. Not a new song, but one that's been around for a while, which, come to think of it, is what we want out of the things that matter.


BETH ORTON
Love Like Laughter

Some of the worst wrongs
Get righted on three chords,
Like a promise,
Or a kiss goodbye.
When the sneer on your lips
Is the liveliest thing,
Just alive enough to die.

Open my heart,
In my heart there's something telling me
To open my heart.
Open my heart
Yeah, I've been blind,
And all that's been lost
Is a short loop running round my mind.

Love is like laughter
See it happen by chance,
Like a promise,
Or a kiss goodbye
When the smile on your lips
Is the liveliest thing
More alive than any sky I've seen.

I open my heart
In my heart is there's something telling me
To open my heart.
I open my heart,
See I've been blind,
And all that's been cut
Is a short loop running round my mind.

I open my heart
In my heart there's something telling me
To open my heart.
I open my heart,
See I've been blind,
And all that's been cut
Is a short loop running round my mind.

It's just running round my mind,
Running all the time.
Running all the time
It's a short loop
A short loop