Ae Ha

She and I – between loneliness and familiarity, with me
She and I – between absence and presence, with me

On the long journey come through eons,
a teardrop as large as the smile on the face

Though she is not near, in memory,
though present with me, in darkness,
I suffered.. this life
the day I said yes, the day I said no,
that breath will not come again,
I suffered.. this life

The song of love I release from my mind,
I cannot offer to you again,
why were we made to scatter and come together again,
this journey stops now

On the long journey come through eons,
a teardrop as large as the smile on the face

This is a quiet, meditative song about a love lived entirely in the in-between. She and I, the singer says, caught between loneliness and familiarity, between her absence and her presence. As the acoustic reprise of a Ridma Weerawardena song, it treats the relationship less as a story than as a state of suspension, two people neither fully together nor fully apart.

The imagery reaches across lifetimes. On the long journey come through kalpas, the vast eons of samsara in Buddhist thought, he has carried a teardrop as large as the smile on his face, joy and grief in exactly equal measure. Whether she was far away in memory or close beside him in the dark, the refrain is the same tired word: vinda, I suffered, this life. The day he said yes and the day he said no have passed, and that breath, he says, will never come again.

By the end he is ready to let go. The song of love he once carried he now releases from his mind, unable to offer it to her again, and he asks the ache of the whole piece: why were we made to scatter and reunite over and over, only for the journey to stop here now? It is a grown, philosophical kind of heartbreak, one that sets a single lost love against the enormous backdrop of rebirth and, at last, simply puts it down.