Yes, we all very aware that Frank Ocean has released not one, but two records over the last week, giving some kind of healing to broken hearts all over the world who have been lugging their pain around for the last three years. However, while everyone concentrates on Blonde, I found myself listening to something else.
I’ve been training myself to sincerely appreciate artistic offerings that people present in whatever form, by really relaxing when I consume the art so that I can fully appreciate the work. And so that’s what I did when I decided to take a listen to Corinne Bailey Rae’s recent offering, The Heart Speaks In Whispers.
Honestly, it took me three, almost four listens, to warm up to the new work and shed any preconceived ideas of what I thought that it should be, especially after how great The Sea (2010) was.
Fans of the British songstress waited way longer than three years for this offering – add on two more years why don’t you, and I’ll give you two more if that’s what it takes to heal your broken heart and produce a work as beautiful and whole as this one – because I’m tired of listening to stories about heartache.
The album starts its 16-song journey on an up-beat tip with The Skies Will Break, keeping us grooving well into the sixth song, Green Aphrodisiac, and almost into the seventh, Horse Print Dress. It steadily gets slower and slower until the listener is presented with the stripped down last few songs.
Instead of that being super frustrating for me, I find that the album actually gets better the nearer it gets to the end (a great feat for any artist!) with the sweet, sweet, sweet High.
Like High, the album is an ode to Rae’s newfound love and happiness after a long bout of devastation when her husband and first love committed suicide.
There is a sweet maturity that rings throughout the songs: She is older, she is wiser, she is different, she has gone through pain and heartbreak, but has also allowed herself to heal, and she is stronger – this is new love; this is not wild love, this is tender love; this is cherished love.
It’s almost as if she didn’t expect herself to find anything like she’d experienced before, and there is a sort of reverence for what she has now…
“My darling, you make me do everything differently. Your love is taking me high as the moon, don’t want to move ‘cause I don’t want to break the spell. Now that you’re mine, I’m staying quiet ‘cause my words are useless. They only confuse us… I know they probably want me to open the door and tell it all to the world like I’ve done before, but it’s the things that you do when there’s nobody watching…”
It’s amazing what pain or weakness does to us. How it makes us wiser to beauty and thankful for mercy – if we’ll allow it to shape us.
I love Romans 8:26-30:
“… when we are weak and do not know how to pray, so the Spirit steps in and articulates prayers for us with groaning too profound for words. Don’t you know that he who pursues and explores the human heart intimately knows the Spirit’s mind because He pleads to God for His Saints to align their lives with the will of God? We are confident that God is able to orchestrate everything to work toward something good and beautiful when we love Him and accept his invitation to live according to His plan. From the distant past, His eternal love reached into the future. You see, He knew those who would be his one day, and He chose them beforehand to be conformed to the image of His son…”
Although it’s important that we consistently pursue Jesus throughout the good and the bad times, it is often in our weakness that we draw closer to God. The good news is that, during those times when we don’t have anything to say, there is one who knows the innermost parts of our hearts intimately, aligning our hearts to his plan when we are confronted by the sobriety of life.
He was always waiting for us, but sometimes it’s just so easy for us to get caught up in the love of other things that we so gladly scream our love and support for from the hilltops! The love that Jesus has for us is like a fine wine: it’s been waiting, getting better and better with time.
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