I didn’t know it at the time, but some of my lowest, dimmest hours were the doorway to everything bright that came after. There’s a second, so small you could miss it, when darkness and light share a single breath. That’s the sweet communion of a kiss: endings and beginnings pressed together.
Through that stretch of my life, Judee Sill’s “The Kiss” was my constant companion. The song kept whispering that sometimes something has to fall away before love can rise. It isn’t morbid; it’s merciful. You let go, you make room, and then, somehow, a new song starts. That melody taught me that salvation often wears the clothes of surrender, and that the way up can look, at first, like a letting go.
Falling in love always asks for a sacrifice: old habits, old stories, the version of yourself that can’t carry the next thing. I wrestled with why this song, so luminous and true to me, didn’t land for the person I hoped would hear it the same way. Maybe it wasn’t supposed to. Maybe it was meant to find me, to steady me, to tune my heart to a higher key.
I think about that scene in City Slickers when Bruno Kirby tells the story of his worst day and, almost offhand, admits it was also the best day of his life. That paradox makes perfect sense to me now. The breaking is part of the blessing. The lowest note is the root that makes the harmony ring.
Judee sings of choirs and sky fire, of the soul’s hard passage into light. I feel that every time: the hush before the heart learns a new language, the sky inside me bursting like stars. And I’m grateful to the song for carrying me, and to Rudy Fischmann for revisiting it on Discograffiti Patreon only Perfect Songs Forever. It reminded me why I love it so much, and why love itself can feel like a night sky suddenly going supernova.
Some days still ask me to let something go. When they do, I press play. The darkness breathes; the light answers. And somewhere in between, a kiss, quiet and holy, makes room for the next beginning.
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By Patrick Tape Fleming