true love waits

true love waits

i'll drown my beliefs, to have you be in peace

i'll dress like your niece, to wash your swollen feet

just don't leave, don't leave

i'm not living, i'm just killing time

your tiny hands, your crazy kitten smile

just don't leave, don't leave

and true love waits, in haunted attics

and true love lives, on lollipops and crisps

just don't leave, don't leave

just don't leave, don't leave

the first time i heard true love waits it was a warbly, bootleg recording. radiohead would bust the song out occasionally, tease audiences with this sickly sweet crooner of a tune, then just as quickly act as if it never happened and they had no idea what song people were talking about. (eventually they acknowledged the song's existence by releasing a live version on the 'i might be wrong,' ep.)

if you clicked on it above and listened however, you will know what i am talking about when i say 'true love waits,' is beautiful. when i heard it, all warbly and thom yorkey, falsetto spooning my ears with that chorus, "true love waits...don't leave...just don't leave..."

yeah, it's desperate but perfect.for me it arrived post any fantastical notions about fairy tale true love and all that but it served to remind me and revive the memory of those feelings and so on a nostalgic level it appealed to me anew. i can listen to it any time. it conjures children so deeply in love they could hurl themselves in front of a speeding train if denied. i miss that feeling in a way, though i would never return to it. still, i visited it every so often by listening to this song.

however today i learned of something called a true love waits pledge. the pledge is used by christian youth to affirm their faith and commitment to remaining chaste until marriage and it goes like this:

believing that true love waits, i make a commitment to god, myself, my family,
my friends, my future mate and my future children to a lifetime of purity
including sexual abstinence from this day until the day i enter a biblical
marriage relationship.

and as you may have guessed, i saw radiohead's 'true love waits,' a completely new light. now it seems to me the real meaning on commentary are not as the surface may suggest, that true love, real love, the meaningful pure love, waits, that it somehow knows itself and guards itself and waits out circumstances. no. rather it seems the idea that true love waits is commentary on the immaturity and perhaps even ignorance of chastity vows. obviously choosing not to have sex, at any age, is not immature, but choosing not to have sex because of mythology, be it belief in imaginary creatures or afterworld punishment or that a future relationship will somehow be soiled or sullied, is silly.

it was this article that got me to thinking about all of this and it is a truly interesting read.