Peter and Paula
“I did not come to steal.
This all is so unreal.
Can’t you show me how you feel now?
Come on, come talk to me.
I can imagine the moment
Breaking out through the silence
All the things that we both might say
And the heart, it will not be denied
‘Til we’re both on the same damn side
And the barriers blown away.”
I love this song, and this performance of it. But I don’t know if I always believe anymore that talking can do me any good. I don’t think words can build bridges if there aren’t the foundations for them in our hearts, and sometimes I think that maybe we just need to walk away, to accept that our hearts aren’t and never will be on the same damn side. And then I worry that I’m becoming cynical, or that it’s weak of me to walk away from what could be because I can’t bring myself to accept that it’s not what I want. (“I want out but only because I want in and there is no in with him,” Masha Tupitsyn writes in No, That Wasn’t Our Happiness.)
I always found it fascinating that lyrically, the song is about the power of communication, but the staging is all about restrictions and limitations. Held back by the telephone cord, Peter never quite reaches Paula, and in the end, it’s that same cord that physically pulls him away from her.
Also, is Paula Cole stunning here or what?