high fidelity

There was a time when it seemed that everyone in my life communicated in song lyrics. When we were miserable or in love (or sometimes both) we would write each other notes with little snippets of favourite verses. Sometimes, if we were miserable or in love enough, we would write our own, leading to band introductions like "Hi, we're Under the Attic, and our songs are about pain. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely 'cause y'all deserved it."
I know some people believe that being too attached to the words means you're somehow missing the point of music, but I disagree--how else can you explain that some lyrics which transport you out of yourself when you hear them look downright stupid on a page? It's only when you put them together that they really take off.
Today I was thinking about all the lyrics that people have sent me over the years and how they've made me feel. I'm vulnerable to that sort of thing--I'm terribly vain, and I like to know what kinds of words bring me to mind. Does anyone else have those moments when you're listening to a song and you think, I wish someone would say that about me? Does anyone else have a short list of song lyrics in their heads that they're waiting to receive? And if so, would you post them so that I don't feel so embarrassed about my narccicism? I'll go first.
I used to really want someone to quote Tom Waits about me:
I wish you'd known her, we were quite a pair
She was sharp as a razor and soft as a prayer

On my birthday this year I actually received a card with lyrics from my mental list. I cried. Come on, wouldn't you? They're from a Weakerthans song (surprise) and they go like this:
you are a radio
you are an open door
i am a faulty string of blue christmas lights

I love that, and the implied second half of the verse:
you swim through frequencies
you let that stranger in
while i'm blinking on and off and on again

I'm not sure how those two songs could be reconciled, but let's just say that in this case, moving from Tom Waits to the Weakerthans was a case of positive evolution.
Lyrics are a huge part of my emotional landscape. My mom is the master of sending me nice lyrics that make me cry. We don't have the same taste in clothes, decor, or for that matter, music, but give that woman a lyric sheet and hand me a kleenex. After a particularly traumatic breakup, I posted Dar Williams' song "My Friends" on the wall beside my bed and read it every day. More than once I have received a mixed tape and spent hours, days, freaking out about which songs were significant. Does she like me? Did she mean this? What about this other, much less flattering song that comes later?
There are some songs that are so attached to one part of my life or one person that they're always together in my thoughts, part of the same fabric. It all makes me wonder about people who don't much like music, or aren't interested in the words. What goes in this space in their heads? How do they conduct friendships, romances, apologies? Is life different when you always have to use your own phrases? And how do they get through it when they just don't know what to say?

I think it would be great to see which lyrics people would use to describe themselves and their lives. It's a new way to look at folks you thought you already knew. So assuming my ego is not monstrously inflated, and that other people do have those thoughts...'fess up. As bribery, I offer you this:

if I had a camera
showing all the light we give
and showing where the light extends
I'd give it to my friends

(Dar Williams, "My Friends")