That is if listening to a song every day and finding as many live versions as possible can be considered obsessed. This is one of those rare songs that never becomes tiresome and I get some new insight from each performance.
There are times when I sing along and the thought I have is "this is the perfect song".
But maybe that is just me.
Some of my favorite performances:
Sharon Van Etten performs 'One Day' for WBEZ from WBEZ on Vimeo.
For me, the song puts me in the mind of of my favorite sonnet. 'I Know I Am But Summer to your Heart' by Edna St. Vincent Millay. The use of the seasons as metaphors for seasons of love and the wish that just as summer comes after winter, love can return after leaving.
Here is Edna in 1922:
I know I am but summer to your heart,
And not the full four seasons of the year;
And you must welcome from another part
Such noble moods as are not mine, my dear.
No gracious weight of golden fruits to sell
Have I, nor any wise and wintry thing;
And I have loved you all too long and well
To carry still the high sweet breast of spring.
Wherefore I say: O love, as summer goes,
I must be gone, steal forth with silent drums,
That you may hail anew the bird and rose
When I come back to you, as summer comes.
Else will you seek, at some not distant time,
Even your summer in another clime.
And here is Sharon:
Snow is outside but I'm by your fire I feel all the love you'll bring
You gotta see how we can see this out
Summer in mind and spring by your side
You'll see all the love we'll keep
Gotta see that we couldn't be there
Here is a different St. Vincent performing 'Surgeon', one of my top songs of 2011.
