Music Monday #22: Let's Talk About Love by Celine Dion

At first, this album might seem like a sharp left turn if you're coming to this post from the previous in the series but again with context you should see this isn't the case, they have more in common than you'd think.  'Let's Talk About Love' was released by Celine Dion in 1997 and remains to be one of my most listened to albums by Celine Dion.  This isn't the first album of hers to feature on this list and spoiler alert it won't be the last.

Some albums I fall in love with when they are released, with the meaning and the emotion that I attach to them being a bond that is forged when I first listen to the album, but this album is one that my attachment to has grown with age.  I was 9 years old when it was first released and as I have grown, events in my life has caused tracks on this album to strike a chord with me.  This post will sound cliché to some but every word is true and when you understand how much music means to me and how I turn to it in moments where I can't process my feelings it will make perfect sense that these events would align.

'My Heart Will Go On' is one of the singles from this album that reached its widest syndication as it was part of the motion picture soundtrack for the 1997 adaptation of Titanic starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet.  The track was ubiquitous for a time, everyone knew it, everyone knows the lyrics to it, people would sing along, and it has been the subject of countless parodies.  The track however has a particular significance to me, as it played on shuffle the night my Grandmother died in 2005.  She had been in hospital for a few weeks prior and her health had taken a turn, my Mother and my Aunts and Uncles had been taking shifts at the Hospital staying with her.  That night I was home alone after they left for the hospital, I was in no state to sleep so I did what I always do and turned to music.  I was sitting in my bedroom listening to music my entire library of a few thousand songs at the time was on shuffle and I was trying not to think about anything.  Around 3 in the morning that track played and the shell that I had placed all of my emotions inside cracked and my heart sank, I felt a feeling of dread and started to cry.  I remember our Dobermann who was sleeping downstairs in the house that night came up the stairs into my room I must have woken him thought I don't remember making much noise.  Early in the morning Mum arrived home with Dad and she was in tears and my heart stopped.

'My Heart Will Go On' is a song that I will forever associate with the passing of my Grandmother, I'll never forget that night and I'll never forget the look on the dog's face when he saw me crying.  I've heard people say that animals don't feel emotion, I don't believe that for a second.  I know the arguments made about projecting human behaviour onto animals but I know what I felt and I know what I saw and I am convinced he knew what was happening, for one he never slept in the house so he knew something was different that night.

Like I said you can attach whatever narrative you want to this post and take it as you wish but every word is true every emotion was felt and it's still an experience that stays with me.  The album beyond that track has grown in time to become associated with events in my life that were incredibly emotional.  'Immortality' has become a track that I associate with loss and grief and the comfort in the feeling that there's something more - I don't know if there is but there's comfort at least in the idea that there might be, and given the choice between false hope that leads to nothing and hopelessness at having nothing, at least the former can give you strength to carry on.  I've often contemplated the nature of time and part of the reason why I believe we can't see the future is not simply because it hasn't been decided but for the belief that if you could see every moment of your life from this moment until the moment you die then you would have no motivation to live through it.  If birth is a beginning and death is the end, then life is the journey between the two and the moment you fixate on one of the ends you forget to live.

As a side note, despite the fact this album was released 5 years prior to 'A New Day Has Come' and incorporates songs that aren't in English, that fact never registered with me until several years later as they were just tracks that I had no interest in and didn't listen to much.  My love of language was something that wasn't really cultivated until I started studying Irish in High School when I took a liking to learning how to speak more than just English with proficiency.  Over the years Celine Dion's discography has incorporated quite a few different languages, not only her native French, but English, Spanish, Japanese, Italian, that I can name off the top of my head. 

Let's Talk About Love remains one of my favourite Celine Dion albums not only for how much it means to me but because it continues to grow with me, I still find new levels of appreciation for tracks included on it.  I still return to it from time to time to see if any new connections are made and what bonds are reinforced.