Waiting for Love and Gardot

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Comedienne and social commentator Sandra Bernhard once wrote, “love is the only shocking act left on the face of the earth.” In contrast to last week’s SWIK post and the sexually explicit music from Peaches and Amanda Blank, which in this day and age is really not all that shocking, Bernhard may have been onto something. Amid the eroticism, the commercialization of sex, and the horrors of the daily news (recession, war, terror, torture, starvation etc.) an act of love may, in fact, be truly shocking. This weekend, I was thinking about love. No, I haven’t met a new man. But autumn is the time that I most want to be in love. It’s my favorite season. I like the colors and the crisp, cool air that tells us winter is coming. I find the season romantic. Maybe it’s because many of my relationships began in the fall? Or it’s that When Harry Met Sally is one of my favorite romantic comedies? Whatever. As fall comes to a close and the weather gets a little colder, the season evokes the kind of love that warms you inside. Comfortable, but still sexy. My sentiments about love and the season are captured in Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald version of “Autumn in New York.” I’ve been waiting to find more songs like this and have finally found a slew of them in Melody Gardot. She captures what sounds like love, or at least a wonderful love affair, on her latest album, My One and Only Thrill. Perhaps this is the beginning of something shocking?