Life Is Not A Camera

“Carolee Carmello sings a song about a troubled marriage and holds the climaxing note, on the word “life,” till you think your soul might burst.  This CD, again, is called “This Ordinary Thursday – The Songs of Georgia Stitt” and I highly recommend it.” — Wally Rubin, WAMC Northeast Public Radio

LYRICS:
My husband’s a painter of light
Snapping at faces and capturing souls
In black and white.
He sees the whole world through a glass,
Composing an image and letting time pass him by
As he’s watching the sky.

My husband gets lost in his scenes.
Locked in the basement, his photos are born
Through chemical screens.
He tends his babies, lets them bloom,
Instructing the pictures that in the darkroom, they’re free.
But he never sees me.

And if he’d ask me, I would tell him
That life is not a camera,
And sometimes there’s more than a sky.
As he’s searching for a filter
Or focusing a lens to his eye,
Moments are passing him by.

He’d tell me I’ve misunderstood-
That having to focus, he sees things as well
As anyone could.
But in the hours he’s at play,
The house lies in silence
‘Til morning gives way to night.
And he’s missed all the light.

I cook dinner. He re-heats it,
And he’s surprised that it got cold.
He swears tomorrow he’ll eat with his wife.
But first he shows me the most desolate farm,
Or the most angular tree,
Or how the light shapes the hill,
And I’m supposed to agree
That this is really life.

And if he’d ask me, I would tell him
That life is not a camera,
And sometimes there’s more that you feel.
If our lives were just a picture,
Then maybe I would have more appeal.
But he loves a woman who’s real.

My husband gets older each day.
I worry soon he’ll discover
He’s snapped our lives away.
He looks for moments that are still
Instead of the moments that let him fill up his soul
And be half of a whole.

And if he’d ask me, I would tell him
That life is not a camera.