The lyrics of Autumn Leaves impart the memories of romantic love as they are recollected in a feeling of delicate longing, “I see your lips, the summer kisses, the sunburned hands I used to hold.”
Courtesy of Craig M. Brandt
The sadness holds the remembered softness of the gentle touch of those hands on a bare arm or a cheek in a quiet moment. More wistful than deeply lamenting, as the lover stands by a window gazing out, what is seen is the beauty of the leaves. “
The falling leaves drift by the window / the autumn leaves of red and gold.” A thought of “old winter’s song” that will be coming holds no hoped-for hours of the former lovers embracing before a fire, or holding hands and laughing as snowflakes land on waiting tongues. Rather, there seems an awareness of the two messages of red and gold leaves entering into the heart—one, though, at a deeper level.
But I miss you most of all, my darling,
When autumn leaves start to fall.
A primary way of viewing romantic love, a way that I used when counseling, is of two stages, or possibly three: infatuation, alienation, and less often, a third, acceptance. In the first, nothing can go wrong. In the second, nothing can go right. The first I imagine as the fizz on a soda pop, and the second as the soda pop gone warm, when love at first sight has fizzled out. When what has drawn the two together is the hope (or even expectation) that the other will bring one happiness, but ultimately does not, then time together can turn into each seeing what is unlikable or “wrong” about the other. A one-two pattern occurs and will repeat, for the attraction is about need, rather than love. A third place that two may reach is acceptance, where each is self-responsible. Then what began as romantic love may become real love, an awareness of what one can give and an appreciation for what one is given.
My realization is, “In our experience of romantic love is the seed of potentiality for awakening to real love.”
* “Les Feuilles Mortes” (translated as “The Dead Leaves“) is a popular French song originally
recorded in 1945. It is known in English as “Autumn Leaves.“ The song was composed by Joseph
Kosma with lyrics by French poet Jacques Prévert. . . . The English version of “Les Feuilles
Mortes” was written by American songwriter Johnny Mercer in 1947 with the title “Autumn
Leaves.“ https://frenchmoments.eu/autumn-leaves-the-story-of-the-song/